Must-See TV
Army Of Darkness
ElRey
5 p.m.
A discount-store employee is time-warped to a medieval castle, where he is the foretold savior who can dispel the evil there. Unfortunately, he screws up and releases an army of skeletons. (tvguide.com)

September 28, 2019

2019: Big Year For Mosquito Shield Franchise Corporation

Mosquito Shield Franchise Corporation, the original and most successful mosquito control franchise, has enjoyed continued expansion and growth in the 2019 season. We've welcomed five new locations in:

* Dallas, Texas

* South Orange, New Jersey

* North Brunswick, New Jersey

* Chicago, Illinois

* Dulles, Virginia

* Lansing, Michigan

As the leader in residential mosquito and tick control services, Mosquito Shield is now servicing 26 states.

"We are excited about the growth opportunities across the nation for mosquito and tick control," said Michael Moorhouse, vice president of franchise development. "We are targeting some prime territories in the coming months. Our focus . . . will be to target and open new territories in key locations in the Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Louisville, Denver and Dallas markets. We see great opportunity in servicing these areas, allowing homeowners to rid themselves of the annoyance of mosquitoes and ticks in their backyards."

Mosquito Shield will be presenting at the following tradeshows and providing more information to anyone interested in becoming a franchisee:

* Tampa, Tampa Convention Center - October 11-12, 2019

* Louisville, Kentucky Expo Center - October 16-17, 2019

* Denver, Denver Mart - October 25-30, 2019

* Dallas, Dallas Market Hall - November 8-9, 2019

Mosquito Shield offers mosquito control and tick control services throughout the country, delivering effective solutions, professional service, and guaranteed results to a rapidly growing base of satisfied customers.

Founded in 2001, Mosquito Shield addresses the need for an effective and affordable residential mosquito and tick control treatment. The company developed Mosquito Protection Barrier™ (MPB), a patent pending spray that rids properties of the existing mosquito population and builds a barrier around that property for a virtually mosquito-free environment. MPB includes FlexBlend, the industry's only intelligent spray-blend technology.

The Weekend Desk Report

Programming Note: The site is migrating to a different server on Monday, so we won't be back until Tuesday.

"A Lake View restaurant owner pleaded guilty this week to using sales suppression software to underreport more than $1 million in sales at her North Side restaurant," the Sun-Timesreports.

"Sandra Sanchez, a 45-year-old woman from Morton Grove, admitted to using a 'tax zapper' at Cesar's Killer Margaritas, 3166 N. Clark St., to defraud the state out of more than $100,000 in taxes between 2012 and 2015, according to the Illinois' attorney general's office.

"The 'tax zapper' software automatically deletes records of cash sales transactions and reconciles the data so that reported sales match reported income, prosecutors said. The software was banned in 2013."

Huh. I'm relatively fascinated by this! I did not know such a thing as tax zapper software existed - and apparently in such abundance that it had to be banned!

Now, was that a federal or state ban? Doesn't say, though it appears the prosecution was by the state (see below for more on this). However . . .

"An Everett, Washington man who worked for a Canadian company that sells point of sale computer software, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Seattle to 18 months in prison and three years of supervised release for his role in a scheme to sell 'Tax Zapper' software, announced U.S. Attorney Annette L. Hayes," the U.S. Department of Justice said in 2017.

"John Yin, 66, pleaded guilty in December 2016, to wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the government admitting that he promoted and sold a revenue suppression software that allowed restaurants to underreport their sales and illegally lower their tax bills.

"The software - sometimes called a 'Zapper' program - resulted in a loss amount of more than $3.4 million.

"At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones said Yin served as a facilitator for illegal operations.

"'This was illegal, this was criminal and you had to know you have to pay taxes . . . but you continued - motivated by greed.'"

*

"Historically, state law enforcement agencies, not the Justice Department or Internal Revenue Service, have taken the lead in cracking down on the use of revenue suppression software," according to a 2017 post by Fox Rothschild.

"In early 2016, the Attorney General of Washington State filed what he called the 'first-of-its-kind' criminal case against a restauranteur, Yu-Ling Wong, for allegedly using sales suppression software to avoid paying nearly $400,000 in state sales tax.

"That case, which evidently spawned the federal prosecution of Yin, began as a routine audit by the Washington State Department of Revenue, which trains its auditors to detect the use of revenue suppression software . . .

"Many states have passed laws outlawing the use of revenue suppression software, including Washington, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Utah and West Virginia, and others are considering proposals to enact such laws."

And others . . . including Illinois.

"On October 4, Governor Brown of California signed into law Assembly Bill No. 781, which creates a new criminal offense relating to the purchase, installation, use, transfer, or sale of any 'automated sales suppression device or zapper or phantom-ware' with the intent to defeat or evade the determination of the state's sales or use taxes," LexisNexis reported in 2013.

"California joins Texas, North Carolina, Connecticut, Illinois, and other states in enacting a law targeting automated sale suppression devices, zappers, or phantom-ware."

"Provides that a person who knowingly sells, purchases, installs, transfers, possesses, uses, or accesses any automated sales device, zapper, or phantom-ware for use in an electronic cash register or other point-of-sale system in this State is guilty of a Class 3 felony."

"Sandra Sanchez, 44, a Morton Grove resident and the owner of Cesar's Tacos at 3166 N. Clark St. in Chicago, which describes itself as the 'home of the killer margaritas,' knowingly falsified the business' 2012 taxes.

"She reported $1,730,642 in revenue despite knowing that 'gross receipts of Cesar's Tacos, Inc. were substantially more than the amount reported,' according to the indictment."

So it was the feds?

"Last August, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced Sandra Sanchez would be the first person to be charged in state court under a 2013 law intended to make it easier to prosecute people for using "zappers."

"The owner of the Lakeview Cesar's Killer Margaritas restaurant faces charges of theft and tax evasion in Cook County court after Madigan said Sanchez used an automated device to avoid paying more than $1 million in sales tax to the state department of revenue."

So both the state and the feds went after her?

"Last August, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced Sandra Sanchez would be the first person to be charged in state court under a 2013 law intended to make it easier to prosecute people for using 'zappers.'"

*

Back to today's Sun-Times:

"Sanchez's conviction is the first in Illinois to involve such technology, prosecutors said. She was sentenced to two years in prison and one year of supervised release."

So in six years of the state law's existence, this is the only conviction? Is this not as big a problem as thought at the time the law was passed, or has enforcement been lax? Or perhaps business-owners are sufficiently deterred. Assignment Desk, activate!

*

Patch:

"Federal prosecutors also announced criminal charges against two other restaurant owners as part of the same investigation, which remains ongoing.

"They include Huli Zhao, 59, of Westmont, the owner of Katy's Dumpling House in Westmont and Chun Xu Zhang, 42, of Aurora, who owns Sushi City in Downers Grove; Quan Shun Chen, 42, a Chicago resident and the owner of Hunan Spring in Evanston and Israel Sanchez, 43, of Chicago, the owner of Cesar's on Broadway on North Broadway in Chicago, according to the U.S. attorney's office."

*

Also, I'm confused whether the Chicago restaurant was called Cesar's Tacos or Cesar's Killer Margaritas. Also, I wonder if their margaritas really are killer. Fact-check, please!

*

Aha!

"Sandra Sanchez, 44, a Morton Grove resident and the owner of Cesar's Tacos at 3166 N. Clark St. in Chicago and Israel Sanchez, 43, of Chicago, the owner of Cesar's on Broadway at 2924 N. Broadway St. in Chicago were each charged with knowingly filing false tax returns Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago," Patch reported.

"Both restaurants are also known as 'Cesar's Killer Margaritas.'"

*

BUT . . . on their website, they call themselves "Cesar's - Home Of The Killer Margaritas." And their URL is killermargaritas.com, which I have to admit is pretty killer.

Cesar's:

"If you haven't tried our signature Killer Margaritas, you're truly missing out. Our secret concoctions of ultimate goodness will thrill any palate. We have over 12 flavors such as Lime and Blue Curacao, as well as seasonal flavors like Chamoy-garita and Mango. Served on the rocks or frozen.

"We encourage you to get creative. Try the Raspberry blended with a sugar rim. Or maybe you'd prefer the Guava on ice with Chile salt. Whatever your mood, we've got a margarita to match it."

Also, you can share your pics on social media for freebies and discounts. Like their Instagram, presumably:

A post shared by Cesars (@cesarschicago) on Jul 12, 2019 at 12:08pm PDT

*

Plus: Cesar's YouTube promo video.

*

Finally, was Cesar's cheating their employees? I tried to think hard about this but it made my head hurt.

*

Whew, what a journey. I just may head over for a killer margarita now!

-

New on the Beachwood . . .

The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #271: Someone Told You So, Repeatedly. It Might Have Been Us.What the Cubs and Trubisky have in common. Including: Maddon's Post; Fixing The Unclutch (Another Word You Could Use Is 'Chokey') Cubs; The White Sox Core Is No Joke; Run, Mitchell, Run; Blackhawks Czech Line: Wendell Carter Jr.'s Rule-Breaking Strip Club Visit; In Other Words, The Fire Have No Shot At The Playoffs; and Red Star Sam Kerr Is A Star.

*

Mosquito Shield Is HereNow serving Chicago with its Mosquito Protection Barrier™ including FlexBlend, the industry's only intelligent spray-blend technology.

September 27, 2019

The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #271: Someone Told You So, Repeatedly. It Might Have Been Us.

What the Cubs and Trubisky have in common. Including: Maddon's Post; Fixing The Unclutch (Another Word You Could Use Is 'Chokey') Cubs; The White Sox Core Is No Joke; Run, Mitchell, Run; Blackhawks Czech Line: Wendell Carter Jr.'s Rule-Breaking Strip Club Visit; In Other Words, The Fire Have No Shot At The Playoffs; and Red Star Sam Kerr Is A Star.

"Chicago's historic World Series win was supposed to spawn a new power, but the team has delivered a worse result every season since. What went wrong? And can they still build the kind of machine capable of withstanding poor luck?"

September 26, 2019

The [Thursday] Papers

"City Treasurer Kurt Summers announced the Chicago Community Catalyst Fund in 2016 with much fanfare - the city would earmark $100 million to jump-start investments in struggling neighborhoods, providing the seed money needed for ventures in places where many banks had been reluctant to put their money," the Tribunereports.

Sounds great! I bet by now we're seeing results.

"None of it was spent. In fact, it wasn't until Summers was about to leave office this May that he moved $75 million of the earmarked money into a bank account where it could be administered."

"Now, Lightfoot herself is looking to reboot the program and finally deliver on its promise."

Good. But WTF happened?

*

"After Summers and then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel publicized the idea in fall 2016, the City Council approved an ordinance that November to allow the treasurer to immediately transfer up to $35 million into the fund, and follow with another $35 million in 2017. Up to $30 million could go into it in 2018.

"When Lightfoot took office, she learned that Summers had moved the $75 million out of the city's coffers and into the Northern Trust bank."

I bet Northern Trust was glad to have it!

"The new mayor ordered the money returned to the city's coffers."

Oh.

*

"Communications from the days after Lightfoot's term began show administration officials and city attorneys discussing why Summers shouldn't have moved the $75 million.

In a May 29 letter the Tribune obtained through an open records request, Deputy Corporation Counsel James McDonald told new Chief Financial Officer Jennie Huang Bennett the $75 million appears not to meet the definition of "eligible funds" as laid out in the city code governing the Catalyst Fund because the city comptroller did not join Summers in determining its eligibility. "It would be advisable to reverse this transfer as soon as possible," McDonald wrote.

"Summers says he acted correctly in moving the money, and that he's happy Lightfoot wants to make the fund work as he intended."

Okay, I hope Summers isn't left off the hook that easily. Nor Rahm.

*

"But the program has had detractors on the City Council."

Why? It sounds like a good idea, just one that was badly (or not at all) executed.

"To begin with, a handful of aldermen argued there wasn't enough oversight built into the ordinance to ensure the money was going to worthwhile programs in under-invested communities. And, if investments started flowing from the fund, there were some who worried about whether the money would make it to the struggling West and South side neighborhoods that needed it, said Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, who voted against it."

Oh.

"I never thought it would succeed," Waguespack said. "We thought it was going to be a bust, and I guess it was."

I'm never going to put my full faith in a Chicago alderman, but aren't you glad Waguespack is now the council's finance chair? That alone is almost worth the election of Lori Lightfoot.

*

"Rather than go forward with the once-ballyhooed Catalyst Fund program, Waguespack said Lightfoot should consider ending it. Instead, Waguespack said, the city should keep the funds within its financial structure, where it would be subject to the usual checks and balances.

"There was no oversight. It took accountability for how the money was spent out of the hands of anyone but the mayor or the treasurer," he said of the fund. "It was shaping up basically to be a slush fund for the mayor to play with. There was nothing stopping that money from being invested in projects in the (North Side) 43rd or 47th wards, which really don't need that kind of boost."

Like a junior TIF fund.

*

"The City Council voted on it and it was approved in 2017 to set aside the money. We did that, and the move to Northern Trust was simply the next step, the creation of the account to hold that money," Summers told the Tribune. "Just as the city has accounts at many financial institutions for various purposes."

Right. Might as well earn even a little interest on the money. Plus, isn't all city money in a bank account? I mean, just where are the "city's coffers?" So now I'm confused about what was improper about it. Lack of oversight?

"As for the timing, four days before he left office and Conyears-Ervin took over as treasurer, Summers said that's just how long it took for the fund's board to come together and be ready to make the move. 'I think it was a first-of-its-kind investing vehicle, and these things take time,' he said. The program 'was never a priority for Mayor Emanuel,' which also slowed things down, Summers added."

So maybe the real problem here isn't where the money was parked but the fact that it was never spent.

Also, just because Rahm Emanuel is out of office doesn't mean he shouldn't be called to answer for his actions when he was in office. He may refuse to comment, or spew mad spin, but make the call - especially as he gallavants around the nation's elite news publications and television programs bragging about his (failed) mayoralty.

*

"It was proper to move the money to Northern Trust as was planned, rather than to leave it sitting in a segregated account within the city coffers for Conyears-Ervin to find when she took over, [Summers] said."

Perhaps a municipal finance expert could help suss this out. What exactly did Lightfoot find improper about the money being stored at Northern Trust?

My first thought, which isn't addressed in the article, was that Summers had a relationship with the bank. That's usually how these things go. The bank, in turn, contributes to his campaign or offers him a job after he leaves office. (Summers' predecessor, Stephanie Neely, was a vice president at Northern Trust before becoming city treasurer; now she's at JP Morgan.) I don't have any evidence that any such relationship exists, but I also don't see any evidence that any such connections were sought by the Tribune. At least dispatch with the natural suspicions that rightfully arise in a town where coincidences do not exist.

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Profanity Inanity
"When Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th) signed on to Mayor Lori Lightfoot's City Council leadership team, she did not agree to forfeit her independence or sever her deep roots at the Chicago Teachers Union," the Sun-Timesreports.

"That much was painfully obvious this week when Garza, Lightfoot's hand-picked chairman of the City Council's Committee on Workforce Development, introduced Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at a CTU rally called to rev up a rank-and-file casting a strike vote.

"The provocative video circulated on social media shows Garza stepping to the podium and promptly using profanity.

"That's right, mother-f---er!" Garza said, raising her fist in the air, after being introduced by Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th).

For the children reading the article who can't figure it out, the missing letters are "uck."

Also, breaking news: Reporters, editors and normal humans all use "profanity" every motherfucking day. Get the fuck over it already.

*

"What would Lightfoot think if she saw the Garza video?

"I think she would understand. She knows why I'm at CTU introducing Bernie Sanders in front of the teachers. I'm not being disloyal to the mayor," Garza said.

"As a human being, we have multi-facets. I can be loyal to the teachers that work hard every day. It doesn't mean I'm disloyal to the mayor . . . I came out of CTU. I can be loyal to my husband. I can be loyal to my kids. I can be loyal to my employees and the people I work with. Your loyalty doesn't have to lie in one spot."

Framing this article around loyalty (and fucking profanity) is the sort of thing only a reporter (with enabling editors) who bought into the old Chicago Daley/Emanuel framework of government would do. Every public official should be loyal to the public, not the mayor or any other officeholder. I hope we see fewer tools and more real legislators in the Lightfoot era. It doesn't signal mayoral weakness; rather, the past signalled aldermanic weakness that for decades, if not forever, badly hurt the people of this city.

*

The real questions I would ask Garza would center around which issues she thinks the city is getting wrong in its negotiations with CTU.

"If there's no compromise, then they have no choice but to strike," she told the Sun-Times.

Fair enough. The next question, though, shouldn't have been about loyalty to the mayor, but about where she thinks the mayor and her bargaining team aren't compromising enough.

-

New on the Beachwood today . . .

Swiss Back In Chicago!
In 1864, Switzerland became the first country to open a consulate in Chicago. In 2014, the Swiss closed the consulate as a cost-cutting measure. Now, the Swiss are back!

From Comfortably Smug to the president's son to the president, nonsense all the way. The letter didn't ask Ukraine to investigate Trump. It asked Ukraine not to close Manafort investigations to avoid angering Trump, which some Ukrainian officials told the NYT had happened. pic.twitter.com/MqNTzVzvKA

Wow: "White House officials told me that they were directed' by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials."

.@murraywaas on Giuliani: "The Ukrainian initiative appears to have begun in service of formulating a rationale by which the president could pardon Manafort, as part of an effort to undermine the special counsel's investigation." Wow. https://t.co/LrBOcAxgo9@nybooks

There is a throughline from Russia/Mueller to Ukraine (if not multiple throughlines, including seeking assistance from foreign governments to manipulate American presidential elections).

*

"Trisha Hope, who has been to 23 [MAGA] rallies around the country & compiled a collection of Mr. Trump's tweets in a book, said she saw 'nothing improper' in the publicly released version of the call, and that the formal move toward impeachment had strengthened her support."

The reopening of the Chicago representation by the FDFA comes in response to a parliamentary request. The consulate general will increase the support available to Swiss companies in the Chicago metropolitan area and it serves as a further example of strengthened Swiss-U.S. ties.

In 1864, Switzerland became the first country to open a consulate in Chicago, sparked by the huge influx of Swiss immigrants to what is now the third-largest U.S. city. Today some 35,000 people of Swiss origin live in the Chicago metropolitan area and throughout Illinois.

The Chicago consulate general was closed in 2014 after 140 years in service; it was decided, for cost-cutting reasons, to transfer consular services to the Swiss representations in Washington and New York.

However, economic, scientific, cultural and personal relations with Switzerland remained vibrant and diverse, and the closure came up for discussion in Parliament in 2018. FDFA head Cassis subsequently informed the Federal Council on 23 May 2018 that the Chicago consulate general would be reopened.

The U.S. is an important partner for Switzerland in every respect. Relations between the two countries have a long tradition, and were further strengthened in 2019 with various presidential and ministerial meetings at federal government level.

The reopening of the new consulate general in Chicago will now build on these connections in the region. There are more than 100 Swiss companies operating in the Chicago metropolitan area, one of the country's most dynamic economic regions. They provide up to 30,000 jobs, making them the sixth-largest foreign employer there. Swiss exports to the region are valued at CHF 1.3bn annually. The Chicago metropolitan area is thus one of the leading U.S. destinations for Swiss businesses. The Swiss Business Hub responsible for the Midwest has seen a vast increase in demand for its services, particularly from Swiss SMEs. The opening of this consulate general thus bridges the gap between the East Coast and West Coast.

Cooperation is also being stepped up in education, research and innovation. Neutron physics is an example of one area in which Switzerland and the U.S. cooperate closely, involving researchers from ETH Zurich and the universities of Geneva and Basel.

"Chicago has a key position in our bilateral cooperation in innovation," said Cassis at the opening of the consulate general. He also referred to the many Swiss immigrants who settled in the Midwest and played an active role in its expansion.

The new consulate general offers Swiss businesses and institutions a direct point of contact for their various needs. As Cassis pointed out at the opening event, the focus is on "innovation, investment and people" and, in particular, promoting the economic interests of Switzerland.

The consulate general is also in contact with the large Swiss community in the Chicago region. Consul General Bruno Ryff took office in Chicago on 1 September 2019. However, consular services for the region will continue to be handled in Washington and New York.

September 25, 2019

The [Wednesday] Papers

Perhaps you've seen the memes, the ones that poke fun at Illinois and encourage thoughts of moving away. In one, a marijuana plant appears alongside the message, "Illinois: We'll keep you as high as our taxes."

An "Escaping Illinois" Facebook group has more than 39,000 followers. One man even wrote a song called "Goodbye Illinois," lamenting the state's taxes and political corruption and expressing his desire to leave.

Memes, however, can't capture the complexity of population trends for an entire state or region.

The state has been struggling to keep residents for decades, with more people leaving than arriving since at least 1970. But it's only in the last few years that the state's population and that of its largest and most important economic engine, Chicago, have slipped.

During that time, the gap between the number of people leaving the state and those arriving has widened. Those losses were formerly offset by gains from international migration and births, but these numbers have also decreased recently. As a result, the overall state population began to fall in 2014.

Other neighboring Midwestern states - Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri - also have had a difficult time both keeping existing residents and attracting new ones. But all of those states have experienced population growth for most of this decade, though the numbers are small. Not Illinois.

To better understand the trend, the Tribune gathered and analyzed years of census data, interviewed demographers and spoke with people who have decided to move. Here is some of what we discovered.

I. Am. So. Glad. The. Tribune. Did. This. Story.

Amidst the rhetoric of an Illinois Exodus, I've long wondered what the facts really were. I hope this story sets the record straight. Let's take a look.

"For decades, more people have left Illinois than have moved into the state. And that gap, which demographers call net migration, is getting worse."

In fact, Illinois is 49th in net migration. Only Alaska is worst (presuming you think it's bad that people are leaving your state in droves.)

The problem, though, isn't just that people are leaving in droves. Illinois ranks 21st in that department. It's that so few people are moving in.

Implication: One could argue that attracting new people here is more important than figuring out how to prevent people from leaving, if that's even possible.

*

"Combine migration losses with an aging population, declining birth rates and stagnated international migration, and the result is decreased population."

So, presuming increasing population is desirable, Illinois needs to attract more young people who want to have babies.

*

You'll have to wade through a bunch of stats and anecdotes before getting to what I thought was the point of the story:

"Are taxes the main reason people are leaving Illinois? Census data can't answer that exact question, though it does provide some clues.

"The Census Bureau conducts a survey every month that includes questions about why a person changed residences in the previous year. The survey offers a range of possible answers, from foreclosure/eviction to change of climate to 'wanted better neighborhood/less crime.'

"Taxes is not on the list of possible answers, though experts said the 'wanted cheaper housing' category might capture people concerned about high taxes."

Now I'm frustrated. I just want to know if the Illinois Exodus based on high property taxes - because the state income tax rate is not at all very high - is real.

"Since 2008, the most common reason for moving cited by people who left Illinois was a new job or job transfer, which accounted for nearly one in three moves."

Okay, how about the other two-thirds of moves?

"In second and third place both for Illinois and the U.S. were two grab-bag answers: 'other family reason' and 'other housing reason.'"

So third place at best, though "other housing reason" could mean many things besides property taxes.

*

In the end, I'm sad to say, the article doesn't deliver. Maybe the answer as to why people leave Illinois can't be answered any more definitively than this. But least from the available evidence, the Illinois Exodus appears to be the fraud many of us suspected it was.

*

Also, any politician who claims people are leaving Illinois because of high taxes should have to prove that claim before a journalist repeats it.

"'A 2016 poll by Southern Illinois University found that nearly half of Illinois residents wanted to move to another state, citing taxes, weather, ineffective and corrupt local government and a lack of middle-class jobs,' Governing magazine reported in June."

(The byline there is actually Stateline, "a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service of the Pew Charitable Trusts that reports and analyzes trends in state policy." So I'm now referring to a Stateline article in Governing mentioned by a Tribune-owned Daily Southtown article found in the comments of Capitol Fax commenting on a Tribune article.)

To the Governing piece:

"It's known here as The Exodus."

Yup. But is it real?

Eh. Read the piece for yourself. But the problem, as the Trib indicates, is that it only addresses one half of the equation - out-migration. It sounds to me like in-migration is the issue.

*

Also, don't forget: Chicago's population started dropping while Richard M. Daley was the mayor, and disingenuously or not, he claimed it was good that the city was getting smaller because it would be easier to govern and provide services to. That's bullshit, of course, but he said it.

*

The key to attracting and retaining residents isn't really about taxes, but quality of life. That includes taxes but also a basket of other things, like job opportunities, wages and the quality of schools.

By the way, Trump made 79 false claims last week, including a bunch of new ones -- on Biden and Ukraine, on Ilhan Omar, on San Francisco, on...mountain climbers, on...the name of the Democratic Party...

Alarming Police Reform News
"The city of Chicago has failed to meet at least a third of the deadlines in the first six months of the legally-binding police reform plan being overseen by a federal judge," WBEZ reports.

Yeesh. This is Lori Lightfoot's bailiwick. She has to get this right.

*

"Among the missed deadlines are a requirement that the Police Department post monthly information on shootings and other incidents of police force, a deadline to 'develop and implement a policy that prohibits sexual misconduct' by officers and a promised overhaul of the field training program for officers fresh out of the academy."

So the misses are substantial, not picayune.

*

"In one instance, the city misrepresented its progress to the judge overseeing the reform plan, which is laid out in a legal agreement called a consent decree."

Okay, red alert.

*

"In a written statement, Chicago law department spokesman Bill McCaffrey said the city is committed to implementing the police reforms 'in a thoughtful and timely manner.'"

Unlike the manner in which McCaffrey is delivering this statement.

Also: Oh for fuck's sake.

*

"Northwestern law professor and MacArthur Justice Center attorney Sheila Bedi agreed it is not uncommon for deadlines to be extended. However, Bedi said she is 'alarmed at the pace of consent decree compliance' and with the 'lack of transparency' coming from the city. She said if deadlines need to be extended to get reform right, the public needs to be told why it's happening and the new deadline."

Can we put her in charge?

*

"While it is behind in many areas, records show the city has mostly lived up to its obligations when it comes to community policing, including the creation of a 'community-driven' annual strategic plan for each police district.

"The Department recognizes that meaningful engagement with the communities it serves is a critical component to success," the city wrote in its status report. "CPD has worked during the past six months to strengthen its community engagement processes."

"However, Bedi said the city's community outreach has 'lacked engagement' and integrity."

So even when the city is meeting a deadline it's doing so badly.

-

Edison Out
"Six years ago, Chicago opened several new alternative schools aimed at serving students who had dropped out of high school but were eager for another shot at a diploma," Chalkbeatreports.

"The country's third-largest school district had previously relied on alternative schools run mostly by a nonprofit with deep community ties. But the new schools were run by out-of-town operators, including for-profit companies that leaned heavily on an online curriculum.

"For years, advocates and journalists have raised questions about the quality and business practices of these high schools, documenting students left to Google answers to tests and the schools' aggressive marketing tactics. Earlier this year, a scathing review by district officials of one provider, EdisonLearning, concluded that students weren't receiving enough in-person instruction and that its online curriculum offered mostly low-level tasks. One district reviewer balked at what Edison charged its schools to use its own software, calling the setup a 'money factory.'

"Over the last few months, Chicago has shut down all four of EdisonLearning's schools."

This is What Democracy Looks Like​: ​A Graphic Guide to Governance​ is a 32-page comic book that will be distributed to classrooms in Detroit, Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee and more this fall. This comic book is the result of a collaboration of educators and word-class cartoonists, and is designed to help teachers who are working hard to prepare students to be empowered, informed, and civic-minded.

At each school, CCS instructors will give away comics and work with teachers to help students gain a deeper understanding of how their government works (and doesn't work) and how they can make a difference in their communities and beyond.

"Comics can engage and inform even the most reluctant of readers," says cartoonist and CCS director James Sturm, "and there's a growing hunger for more civics education and this democracy comic meets that need."

Mikva introduced the comic to the 200 teachers who attended their Action Civics Summer Institute this past July, and connected their teacher network with CCS for this tour.

"As a fun and accessible classroom resource this comic supports students in understanding our democracy and their power to participate in it. The teachers loved it." says Jill Bass, Mikva Challenge's chief education officer.

The tour will start in late September when Sturm and cartoonist Coco Fox will be joined by members of the Mikva team to help students understand what democracy looks like - and how they can be active, informed participants.

"I'm so inspired by the work that Mikva does and am excited to see the power of cartooning enhance their educational efforts," says CCS president Michelle Ollie.

Rahm's Dirty Air

The City of Chicago Office of Inspector General has completed an audit of the Chicago Department of Public Health's air pollution enforcement which finds that gaps in the Department's approach to inspections and violations increases the risk of excessive emissions that harm the public and the environment.

Due to insufficient staffing and a lack of written guidance on how to prioritize the highest-risk facilities for inspection, CDPH met its internally set goals for the frequency of air-quality inspections less than half of the time between 2015 and 2017.

Infrequent inspections reduce incentives for permitholders to renew their annual certificates of operation because violations are more likely to go undiscovered. However, OIG found that CDPH responded relatively quickly to air-quality complaints. The Department set a commendably aggressive goal of responding to air-quality complaints within 24 hours - which is critical given the fleeting nature of air emissions - and met that goal 84% of the time between 2015-2017.

OIG made several recommendations to strengthen CDPH's permit and inspection program. These include,

* developing inspection priorities and goals based on factors such as the proximity of polluting facilities to overburdened communities, public health data, violation patterns, and inspection practices in peer jurisdictions;

* drafting and adopting an inspection manual;

* working to fill vacant positions and determining whether additional inspectors are needed;

* developing, documenting, and implementing an enforcement system that takes full advantage of currently available data to ensure facilities renew their certificates on time.

In response, CDPH largely agreed with our recommendations and stated that it will develop inspection frequency goals; continue filling vacant inspection positions; engage a consultant to help determine appropriate staffing levels; finalize an inspection manual; and develop and implement an enforcement mechanism to identify facilities that have not renewed their annual certificates and ensure they come into compliance.

"In 2011, the prior Administration dismantled the Department of Environment (DOE), scattering its program and regulatory functions across nine other City departments and offices," said Inspector General Joe Ferguson.

"CDPH was assigned the task of regulatory oversight of air pollution in the form of soot, microscopic particles, and toxic airborne chemicals, which cause significant harm to the environment and human health. Our audit found that CDPH's inspection program is not fulfilling its prescribed role in mitigating such harms.

"As we have seen in numerous audits of regulatory oversight functions in recent years, a key culprit is resourcing. That broader phenomenon starts with a failure to cost out new regulatory regimes and standards to assure the funding needed for full implementation, and a general failure to hold public hearings to periodically assess whether appropriations align with evolving needs and priorities.

"While this audit critiques CPDH's management of one component of environmental enforcement, our findings should be cause for assessment of the broader environmental protection enterprise in the aftermath of the dismemberment of DOE.

"CDPH agreed with our recommendations and has already begun implementing corrective actions, but it is crucial that the Department keeps working on its internal policies and procedures to protect air quality throughout the City, for years to come."

"Even as Mayor Rahm Emanuel has criticized state and federal officials for rolling back environmental protections and played up his own green credentials, City Hall has cut back sharply on environmental oversight," the BGA found last February.

"To cut costs, Emanuel's first city budget, for 2012, did away with the Department of Environment, which [Richard M.] Daley created."

What If College Athletes Got Paid? 3 Questions Answered

The California state legislature has approved a bill that allows college athletes to earn money through athletic endorsements starting in 2023. The governor hasn't said whether he'll sign the bill into law. Jasmine Harris, an expert on student athletes, addresses how the bill, known as the Fair Pay to Play Act, would alter college athletics if it gets signed into law. Her edited comments are below.

1. The Fair Pay to Play Act mentions preventing the exploitation of student athletes. Just how are student athletes being exploited?

College athletics has become such a business that the exploitation is happening on multiple levels. It's not just that the colleges are making money off of the student athlete. Players are also prevented from generating any kind of compensation around their image or likeness while they're in college, which - for many of them - is going to be the only time when their likeness or their image has any economic value at all.

But that money - instead of being allocated back to the students or making changes that allow additional compensation to be accumulated by the students - goes to things such as coaches' salaries and new dorms and updated locker rooms with personal barbers and locker seats that roll out into beds.

It's enough to make me wonder whether these students are going to be sleeping in the locker rooms because they're spending so much time in the stadium as opposed to in their own dorms or classrooms.

2. Why do student athletes need compensation on top of their scholarships?

People expect non-student athletes to have a job or two. Studies have found that athletes spend 32 to 44 hours a week on their respective sports, which is in line with my own research, which shows that they spend three times as much time on their athletic responsibilities than they do on their student responsibilities.

So this idea that a scholarship - which is just tuition, fees, books, room and board - is enough, suggests that that's enough for all college students and it's not. And in fact it's becoming increasingly likely that students across the board, in terms of socioeconomic class, are having to get additional jobs to make more money or their parents are having to put in more money on a day-to-day basis for them to live.

3. The bill, if enacted, wouldn't take effect until 2023. Why so long?

I think the California legislature is hoping that the NCAA will see this and try to institute some of its own policy changes that are more in line with the way that this bill is written. The 2023 deadline for instituting this law is about providing a cushion to allow the NCAA time to adequately adjust its current bylaws to be more in line with this new legislation.

Appeals Court Rejects FCC Attempt To Scrap Media Ownership Limits

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Monday delivered a forceful rebuke of the Federal Communications Commission and overturned the agency's latest attempts to eliminate long-standing limits on local media ownership.

An alliance of public-interest groups - Common Cause, the Communications Workers of America, Free Press, the Media Mobilizing Project, the Prometheus Radio Project and the United Church of Christ Office of Communication, Inc., as well as attorneys from the Georgetown Law Institute of Public Representation - challenged the Trump FCC's ruling for its failure to address the impact of this radical deregulation on race and gender diversity in broadcasting.

The court agreed in full with the public-interest groups' argument that the Commission "did not adequately consider the effect its sweeping rule changes will have on ownership of broadcast media by women and racial minorities."

In a 2-1 decision, the judges agreed with this group of petitioners and rejected the FCC's decision to scrap rules prohibiting newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership and barring broadcasters from owning even more stations in a single local market.

The agency's neglect of its obligation to promote localism, diversity and competition in broadcasting has led to a wave of media consolidation as giant broadcast owners have attempted to further expand their hold on local radio and television stations via mergers and the use of shell companies.

This is the fourth time the Third Circuit has rejected some or all of the FCC's efforts to deregulate over the past 15 years due to the agency's failures to study the public impact of its policy changes. In Monday's ruling, the judges characterized the FCC's analysis as "so insubstantial that it would receive a failing grade in any introductory statistics class."

"[Monday's] ruling is a tremendous victory for the public," Free Press vice president of strategy and senior counsel Jessica J. González said. "It admonishes the Trump FCC for its complete failure to consider the impact of its ownership policies on women and people of color. This marks the fourth time this court has rejected the relentless attempts from the FCC and the broadcast industry to weaken media-ownership limits regardless of the damage such drastic deregulation would cause local communities.

"Congress put broadcast-ownership limits in place for a reason: to promote a diversity of viewpoints among local stations. Free Press sued the FCC for turning its back on this core principle, placing station ownership in too few hands and denying millions of people in the United States broadcast media that serve community needs.

"Media consolidation leaves communities with far less of the local news and information people need to stay informed. Despite the growth in digital-media options, free over-the-air broadcasting remains a critical news source for people of color and low-income communities in particular. To meet the needs of these populations, the FCC must nurture ownership diversity, not let giant companies like Nexstar, Fox and Sinclair devour even more local stations.

"The FCC must now do the job it's long refused to do: properly weigh all of the evidence showing the impact of media consolidation on local communities. It's time we had real data on the agency's decades-long neglect of ownership diversity, and then policies designed to fix that problem for real. We're confident that the data will show that more media consolidation is the wrong path for creating a democratic and diverse media system."

Cheryl Leanza, who argued the case on behalf of Common Cause, the Communications Workers of America, Free Press, the Media Mobilizing Project, the Prometheus Radio Project and the United Church of Christ Office of Communication, Inc., made the following statement:

"The Federal Communications Commission has not learned its lesson, even after almost 20 years of litigation about media ownership. The law says the FCC must consider how its rules impact ownership by women and people of color. The FCC treated its important statutory obligation as less important than a high-school math assignment, and the court gave it a failing grade even at that level.

"Not only did the FCC ignore its obligation to diversity, but the Third Circuit opinion upholds the right of public-interest organizations and ordinary individuals to sue the FCC, in direct contrast with the FCC's decision last week narrowing the ability of people to challenge its rules. Reasoned decision-making should not fear court review."

"The Third Circuit Court of Appeals took everyday Philadelphians and our communities into account when considering how diversity of media ownership impacts our dignity and our fight for justice.

"As we organize with Black, Brown, immigrant and other communities in Philly, we see how the diversity of stories grounded in our communities builds our power. This decision is telling the Trump administration that it can't ignore us as it pushes regulations to enrich big companies and hurt our communities. We will build on this victory and support and expand diverse voices in our media here, and nationwide."

Benton Institute for Broadband and Society Senior Counselor Andrew Jay Schwartzman made the following statement:

"The Court of Appeals has found that the FCC has yet again failed to assess how changing its ownership limits affects people of color and women. Diverse ownership benefits everyone, and rejection of the FCC's deregulation is a small step in restoring a system that promotes such diversity."

Georgetown Law Professor Angela Campbell, who has served as counsel to the petitioners since the 2002 Biennial Review and argued two earlier cases, made the following statement:

"It is very gratifying that the court has agreed with us once again that the FCC has paid insufficient attention to diversifying broadcast-station ownership. I hope that the FCC will finally do its job and take action so that that broadcasters will reflect the true diversity of the American public."

September 23, 2019

The [Monday] Papers

"A driver was taken into custody after a car drove through Woodfield Mall Friday afternoon," WGN-TV reports.

*

"A man accused of driving an SUV into and through Woodfield Mall on Friday is being treated at a mental health facility and any decision on possible charges will wait until he is released, according to police," the Sun-Timesreports.

"The 22-year-old is still in custody and was transported to AMITA Health Behavioral Medicine Institute, police said in a statement Saturday. Police don't know how long he will be kept there, but said 'no charges will be authorized until his release.'

"Police had been dispatched to the mall in Schaumburg at 2:21 p.m. amid multiple reports of a vehicle driving in the mall. Officers found that a black SUV had crashed through an entrance near Sears and Rainforest Cafe and proceeded to wreak havoc throughout the shopping center."

*

The incident naturally reminded some folks of a similar scene in The Blues Brothers, though this is no laughing matter.

"This is the Dixie Square Mall," he announces, pulling into a parking lot in Harvey, the next stop on his district tour. "This mall has not been the same since Jake and Elwood Blues drove through it on a mission from God to get to an orphanage in downtown Chicago. That was the last time anything ever happened here."

The mall looks as if it had been struck by a tornado-multiple times. "I don't think we should drive in there," [chief aide Rick] Bryant says, as Jackson maneuvers the SUV down the mall's onetime concourse, debris crackling under his tires. There is still a patchwork roof overhead. "This mall didn't die because the roof collapsed," Jackson says. "It died for want of someone shopping in it. This mall has collapsed and failed because the service-based economy has not made it to Harvey yet."

That's why, for Jackson, the mall is really about the airport. "People [won't be] flying to the Abraham Lincoln airport because they want to get to Peotone," he says. "People [will be] flying into Abraham Lincoln because they can't get into [O'Hare]. I want them to fly into this airport to get them to drive through Harvey to get to Chicago. And when it comes to Harvey, I want to shake them down at my mall," he says with a laugh. And for Jackson, the only way to make that particular dream a reality is to land the airport.

I'll never forget Junior driving me through that mall. It was both hilarious and insane. The debris crunched and crackled under his SUV's tires making a sound both delightful and frightening. Junior seemed to simultaneously wear a big grin on his face and a stern visage as he delivered his brief for Lincoln International. That was a fun and enlightening day.

I found big ideas like a third airport conspicuously missing from the discussion in the last mayoral campaign about economic development and equity. This, I continue to think, is Lori Lightfoot's biggest weakness - does she have the imagination necessary to do more than hum and haw around the edges?

"My worry is that her vision stops at wraparound services and job training," I wrote last May. "That's been tried, although perhaps not in a massive way. We need a much larger vision of equitable economic development that includes megaprojects - the Peotone airport, for example - tied to affordable housing and desegregation to really break the pattern."

In other words, we need Star Wars museums in underserved neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. A casino and pot dispensaries don't count - in fact, locating those kinds of projects in neighborhoods in need of development is exactly what we don't need; we should soak tourists as much as possible with slots, sportsbooks and pot shops instead of further exploiting our poorest people who can least afford gambling losses and and the scourge of addiction.

*

And while I don't endorse getting into bed with Elon Musk, if we enlisted him or anyone else to build newfangled transit anywhere, it would be to Peotone (or to design the airport itself).

*

"The importance of a third Chicagoland airport has been stated so many times it would be impossible to count all of them," the Kankakee Daily-Journalreports.

"But U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Matteson, in Kankakee on Friday morning, said significant progress has been made on the proposed South Suburban Airport at Peotone.

"She noted the majority of the approximate 6,000 acres needed for the project are now owned by the Illinois Department of Transportation and there is more political agreement than ever in terms of moving this development forward."

In fact, it's pretty much up to Lightfoot. In the past, only mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel put the brick on the project, for their own political purposes (controlling jobs and keeping certain campaign contributors and business interests happy). Sure, the major airlines serving the city also demurred, but so what? The airlines will come.

*

"Kelly and her aide, longtime airport advocate Rick Bryant, noted the $20-billion investment made with the past several years at O'Hare International Airport did nothing to ease air congestion."

Rick Bryant!

*

That's because O'Hare expansions and renovations aren't designed to ease air congestion, which could be done easily by imposing a stricter limit of flights there. The continual, ongoing, neverending expansion/renovation of O'Hare is instead designed to maintain a honeypot of jobs, contracts and mayoral public relations opportunities. Passengers don't enter the equation - nor does equitable economic development.

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The Earth Is On Fire
"Morning commutes around Washington, D.C., were disrupted Monday by activists calling for action on climate change," ABC News reports.

"The protest comes after activists gathered at the Capitol on Friday for the Global Climate Strike and coincided with the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, where world leaders were meeting to 'discuss a leap in collective national ambition' for climate change."

*

"A downtown Chase bank branch closed an hour earlier than scheduled Saturday when three protesters refused to leave as part of a demonstration and were taken into custody," NBC Chicago reports.

"The three protesters 'locked' themselves together inside the branch at 150 N. Michigan Ave. and refused to leave while about 20 other demonstrators gathered outside the bank.

"The demonstration was organized by Rising Tide Chicago, which described itself as a local grassroots organization apart of a network of organizations aiming to address the root causes of climate change.

"Rising Tide Chicago accused Chase of increasing its investments in fossil fuels after the U.S. withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord."

Did Chase do that?

"A spokesman for Chase said the company was committed 'to use renewable energy for 100% of our global power needs by the end of next year and to facilitate $200 billion in clean financing by 2025. Also, we recognize the complexity of climate change issues and actively engage with a diverse set of stakeholders to understand their views.'"

I'll take that as a Yes.

*

"The climate in Illinois is warming," Heidi Hartmann, co-chair of the Elmhurst Chapter of Citizens' Climate Lobby and an environmental scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, and Stephen Bogaerts, co-chair of CCL's Northwest Suburbs Chapter, write in a guest column for the Daily Herald.

"Over the last century our average temperature has risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit and is predicted to rise much more rapidly over the next few decades. If the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to increase, the average summer highs and winter lows could increase by 5 degrees or more by mid-century. The implications for human health are serious. Rising temperatures worsen many existing health conditions, and they can also bring new threats.

"Heat makes air pollution worse. On hot, still days, ground-level ozone, a severe lung irritant, forms. The number of days with dangerous ozone levels is increasing. Between 2013 and 2015, the Chicago metropolitan area had an average of 18 'ozone alert' days; that number increased to an average of 27 days between 2016 and 2018.

"On these ozone alert days, people are advised to stay indoors as much as possible, avoid exercising outdoors, and plan outdoor activities for the morning or evening when ozone levels are lower. Children, the elderly, and those with asthma or other respiratory conditions must be especially cautious.

"Another way air pollution harms respiratory health is through particle pollution. Particles that are 10 micrometers in diameter or smaller pass through the throat and nose and enter the lungs. Once inhaled, these particles can affect the heart and lungs and cause serious health effects."

P.S.: I wonder if there is reliable survey data on this: I think a lot of folks think scientists will eventually save us, like, they'll come up with something. And there's nothing we can do in the meantime. I also think neither proposition is true.

-

Louis Y.U.C.K.
"Anyone expecting an apology or remorse from comedian Louis C.K. regarding his widely reported sexual misconduct - first reported in the New York Times in Nov. 2017 - will have to keep looking. He avoided apologizing in the statement he issued in the wake of the original story two years ago. And in his late set Thursday night at Zanies in Rosemont - the second of six shows over three days that were quietly announced and quickly sold out earlier this week - he seemed to be working to reframe himself as the victim," Zach Freeman writes for the Tribune.

Gawd.

*

"On top of the use of a Yondr case to keep everyone's phones locked up throughout the course of the show - which is something a number of comics have begun doing over the last few years to avoid leaked recordings of their sets getting out - this show came with an additional disclaimer that I've never seen before: 'Recording of any kind, including note taking, is not permitting (sic) in the show room. You will be asked to leave.'"

Really?

"I tested the waters during one of the opening acts by using a pencil to write down the comic's name - Mike Earley, by the way - on a comment card at the table and someone quickly approached me, pointed and said, 'There's no writing during the show.'"

*

I would've liked to see Zanies asked about both the booking and the no-writing rule.

Beachwood Sports Radio: Mitch ImpossibleThe autumn of our discontent. Including: Mitch Falsbisky; Only Person In Chicago More Unpopular Than Mitch Trubisky Is Craig Kimbrel; Cubs Lab; The Undertaker; These Cards Will Run!; The Amazin' A's & Yankees; The White Sox Are Still Playing; Chicago Joe Fire; The Sky Is Crying; and The Red Stars Try To Lock Down A Playoff Spot.

Edward Snowden's Permanent Record
"This week when my new book, Permanent Record, became available, the U.S. government sued my publisher for failing to grant the CIA and NSA an opportunity to remove evidence of their crimes from the manuscript. Not even joking."

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Hahn's Hits & Misses
"It's entirely understandable at this juncture why Hahn isn't being hailed as a genius when it comes to evaluating and signing free agent talent," our very own Roger Wallenstein writes in The White Sox Report.

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OI! Chicago's Oriental Institute At 100
A lot of really cool stuff going on to celebrate their centennial.

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SportsMonday: Dunk Tank
Guess who never lost on purpose? The St. Louis Cardinals, our very own Jim "Coach" Coffman reminds us.

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End Of Life On Earth Still Not Big News
"The most recent study into news values suggests that 'bad news' and 'magnitude' are two of the key elements in stories that become news. The extinction of much of the life on Earth certainly meets both of these criteria." And yet . . .

SportsMonday: Dunk Tank

How's that tank job working out for you, Theo?

As the Cubs go down in flames in spectacular fashion to wrap up the fifth season of their post-tank era, it is time to assess many of the assumptions that have surrounded the team and its management during the club president's eight-year reign.

First and foremost, it was assumed that if the Cubs didn't do their best on purpose (you could also say "lost on purpose" but "didn't do their best on purpose" is more accurate) for three bad ridiculous seasons, it would result in a long stretch of contention at the highest level.

It turns out the Cubs were competitive with the best teams in the league for three seasons. The run ended when their lineup sucked for the last month of last year's regular season, eventually choking away a division title in Game No. 163 and then bowing out of the playoffs immediately with a wild card single-game elimination loss to the Rockies.

Speaking of the best teams in the majors this season, only one of them has engaged in a full-scale tank job. I suppose the A's are always engaged in a certain amount of tanking (as are the Rays for that matter) but they aren't as obvious about it as the Cubs were and they seem to have legitimate, major financial restraints.

The Cubs have no such restraints and they have spent like it. I've got no beef with Tom Ricketts' payroll. But Theo has botched his last few big-money free agent signings (in particular Jason Heyward and Yu Darvish and possibly Craig Kimbrel) and that has tied his hands. The only thing worse has been the team's miserable record of drafting and developing talent under Theo.

The team that tanked even worse than the Cubs was the Astros, of course. And they certainly seem like they are ready to roll to another World Series crown. But the other powerhouse big-revenue teams such as the Dodgers, Yankees and Red Sox, have done no such thing. And while the Red Sox won't be in the playoffs this year, the Dodgers and Yankees stand to have the best chances at a World Series outside of Houston.

It was assumed that if Cubs augmented a team filled with homegrown young stars with key big-money free agents, they would solidyif their spot as a member of the best of the best. It didn't work.

It was assumed that once other teams saw how well multiple-year tank jobs worked, it would force them to follow suit. The Cardinals refused and find themselves way ahead of the North Siders as this season comes to an end. The Red Sox are the defending World Series champs.

The Yankees kind of tanked for half a season. I say "kind of" because they remained in contention. It was as though they were tanking but general manager Brian Cashman didn't tell manager Joe Girardi and New York almost earned a wild card in the Peoria native's last season at the helm.

It seems clear at this point that multi-year tanks are anything but a sure thing. And it is also clear that a team like the Cubs, with so much revenue pouring in year after year, should never tank for more than a season.

By the way, if the Cubs had ended their tank after a one season they still could have drafted Kyle Schwarber in 2013. They probably would have lost out on Ian Happ in the 2014 draft and they probably wouldn't have traded for Addison Russell later that year, but otherwise they could have constructed a club that would have been very similar to the present day's lineup and rotation.

And they wouldn't have embarrassed themselves with two atrocious seasons in those years. In so doing, they bought three years ('15 to '17) of contention.

OI! Chicago's Oriental Institute At 100

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago kicks off its centennial celebration Saturday, commemorating 100 years of pioneering research and study of the earliest civilizations in the ancient Middle East.

The OI Museum exhibits the largest collection of ancient Middle East artifacts in the United States, with more than 350,000 artifacts mainly excavated by OI archaeologists and some 5,000 on display to the public on the UChicago campus. Following a multimillion-dollar gallery renovation, the OI is displaying more than 500 artifacts to the public for the first time in conjunction with its Centennial.

One such artifact, a 4,000-pound ancient Persian stone relief, was just returned to the OI Museum after 80 years on loan to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Carved from black limestone and dating back nearly 2,500 years, the nearly 6-by-4-foot relief shows a lion and a bull locked in combat.

Michael Tropea

It was once part of a monumental staircase of a royal palace at Persepolis, the great dynastic city of the Achaemenid Empire and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. n 1931, the OI began a pioneering excavation of the site that spanned eight years and required hundreds of workmen. Most of what was excavated at the time remained on site at Persepolis, but the OI was given several monumental sculptures, in addition to smaller finds, by Iranian authorities in recognition of the work that went into uncovering and preserving the ancient site.

Additional artifacts newly on public display at the OI Museum for the Centennial include:

* A fragment of the oldest known manuscript of A Thousand and One Nights.

* Cuneiform tablets demonstrating the development of the earliest writing systems in Mesopotamia and Iran.

* Statues from the famous Tell Asmar Hoard that were excavated by the OI in Iraq.

* An Egyptian coffin for an ibis, a bird sacred to Thoth, Egyptian god of wisdom, knowledge and sciences.

In conjunction with its centennial, the OI has also collaborated with internationally acclaimed contemporary artists Ann Hamilton and Michael Rakowitz, as well as Mohamad Hafez, who will serve as the OI's first interpreter-in-residence.

Hamilton has created a new large-scale installation entitled aeon in the Grand Reading Room of UChicago's Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, affixing to its massive glass dome a series of translucent images of OI artifacts produced using first generation scanners.

Tom Rossiter

Rakowitz has collaborated with the OI Museum to create a reappearance of a relief from the Northwest Palace at Nimrud, destroyed by Isis in 2015. Integrating an ancient fragment from the OI collection, his piece uses contemporary Middle Eastern newspapers and packaging from northern Iraqi foods.

Michael Tropea

Hafez's works at the OI Museum, as well as his programming as the OI's first interpreter-in-residence, explore the current political turmoil in Syria and throughout the Middle East, addressing issues associated with war and compulsory displacement.

Michael Tropea

The art installations from Rakowitz and Hafez will be on view at the OI Museum during normal visitor hours through June; Hamilton's installation at UChicago's Joe and Rika Mansueto Library is open to the public on Saturdays from 9 to 11 a.m. through October.

Visitors without a UChicago ID can enter to see the installation by obtaining a visitor pass from the ID and Privileges Office in Regenstein Library, which is connected to the Mansueto Library. For aeon, Krueck + Sexton Architects facilitated integration of art and architecture and served as technical advisor to Hamilton and UChicago. ER2 Image Group provided support to Hamilton's vision in the production and installation of aeon.

The new artworks and artifacts, as well as a special exhibition, "We Start Here: The OI at 100," commemorating the highlights of a century of OI discovery and research, will be unveiled at the public OI Centennial celebration on Saturday from 1 p.m. - 5 p.m. at the OI Museum (1155 E. 58th Street). Free programs that afternoon include music performances from the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and an artifact "scavenger hunt" for children. OI faculty and researchers will also be on hand in the galleries to discuss the collections and answer questions.

For more information, OI Museum hours, and a full listing of OI Centennial events and programming, visit oi100.uchicago.edu.

ABOUT THE OI
Both a pioneering interdisciplinary research center and a world-renowned museum, the Oriental Institute (OI) of the University of Chicago aims to understand, reveal, and protect the earliest civilizations.

Since its founding in 1919, the OI has conducted field-defining research across the Middle East, including excavations and field projects, linguistic research deciphering ancient languages, creating comprehensive dictionaries, reconstructing the histories, literatures and religions of long-lost civilizations, and preserving the region's imperiled cultural heritage.

OI research has uncovered new ways of seeing what connects humans and why - providing insights into the ancient world and the challenges societies still face today, from environmental change to immigration to disruptive technologies.

OI field research continues today in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, and Afghanistan. Much of this research is on display at the OI Museum, located on the UChicago campus and home to the largest collection of ancient Middle Eastern artifacts in the United States with 350,000 objects.

Edward Snowden's Permanent Record

The Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Edward Snowden over his new book, Permanent Record. The lawsuit alleges that Snowden published his book without submitting it to the agencies for pre-publication review, a process that prohibits millions of former intelligence agency employees and military personnel from writing or speaking about topics related to their government service without first obtaining government approval.

"This book contains no government secrets that have not been previously published by respected news organizations," says Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and attorney for Snowden.

"Had Mr. Snowden believed that the government would review his book in good faith, he would have submitted it for review. But the government continues to insist that facts that are known and discussed throughout the world are still somehow classified.

"Mr. Snowden wrote this book to continue a global conversation about mass surveillance and free societies that his actions helped inspire. He hopes that [the] lawsuit by the United States government will bring the book to the attention of more readers throughout the world."

The constitutionality of the pre-publication review system is currently being challenged in court by the ACLU and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. The organizations argue the system gives officials far too much power to suppress speech the public has a right to hear and to make unexplained censorship decisions influenced by individuals' viewpoints and access to power.

This week when my new book, Permanent Record, became available, the US government sued my publisher for failing to grant the CIA and NSA an opportunity to remove evidence of their crimes from the manuscript. Not even joking. This is my publisher's response:(via @minipetite) pic.twitter.com/miPKXnn6F7

"Some people have a misconception that [I] set out to burn down the NSA," Edward Snowden told @nprfreshair. "But that's not what this was about. In many ways, 2013 wasn't about surveillance at all. What it was about was a violation of the Constitution."https://t.co/OYeLfM3tZR

Why Is Climate Change Still Not Top Of The News Agenda?

Climate breakdown threatens the lives of us all. Scientific research has suggested that we are in the process of a "mass extinction" event that could lead to "biological annihilation" on a large scale. Records indicate that population decay and the rapid extinction of a large number of vertebrates in recent years amount to "a massive anthropogenic erosion of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services essential to civilization."

Studies find that 97% of published climate scientists agree that climate change is driven by human activity. If the scientific predictions are correct, much of human society is in grave danger though our own actions. So, why isn't climate change the biggest news story in the world?

Zerbor via Shutterstock

The parable of the boiling frog tells us that if a frog is placed in boiling water it will leap to safety. However, if the frog is placed in tepid water which is heated slowly, it will not sense the danger until it is too late.

When it comes to climate breakdown, journalists play the role of the frog. If we take a literal understanding of the word news as the plural of new - that is, news = things that are new - then the ongoing, gradual (in newsroom terms) breakdown of the climate does not meet the criteria. The effects of climate disruption, such as increased occurrences of extreme weather events or individual species extinctions, have news value, but the wider issue does not.

Hurricanes like Dorian make obvious news stories. The slow rise of atmospheric carbon, not so much/EPA-EFE

Nevertheless, this issue cannot be explained in these terms alone. The most recent study into news values suggests that "bad news" and "magnitude" are two of the key elements in stories that become news. The extinction of much of the life on Earth certainly meets both of these criteria. But when it comes to climate breakdown, these important news values can clash with the values of what the same study describes as the "newspaper agenda" and "the power elite." This means that power structures within the mass media prevent climate change being covered as a topic of great importance.

Power Structures Within The Mass Media

One of the most common claims about the role of journalists is that they "speak truth to power" or give "a voice to the voiceless." But most academic research into the role of the mass media in wider society runs counter to these romantic notions of journalism's role as a "fourth estate."

Media research has demonstrated that a significant amount of news can be traced to the public relations activity of powerful corporate and state actors. This can be partially explained by cuts to newsroom staff alongside the growth of the public relations industry. In their new roles as public relations advisors, many experienced former journalists with a detailed understanding of newsroom culture and news values are able to supply journalists with useful quotations, sound bites and even partly-written stories. In some cases, the news media's overreliance on powerful sources has given undue prominence to organizations with a vested interest in playing down news about climate change.

Strategic Rituals And Lobbying

In an important piece of research about objectivity in the news, the media sociologist Gaye Tuchman looked at how journalists defend their craft by appealing to notions of "objectivity." Tuchman described how one of the problems with journalistic objectivity is that, to avoid allegations of bias, journalists present a range of "conflicting possibilities". This often means that journalists give space to both sides of a particular debate without making a judgement on their relative merits. To do so would make them subject to allegations of bias.

In their book Merchants of Doubt, Eric Conway and Naomi Oreskes, two historians of science, investigated why human-made climate change was presented in the news media as an unsettled debate when the scientific literature supporting it was overwhelming.

They found that a group of scientific experts challenged the consensus on climate change on behalf of corporations and conservative think tanks. Some of the individuals involved in this had previously challenged scientific consensus on a range of issues including the negative health implications of tobacco smoke. Corporations engage in this creation of doubt through public relations activity because climate change requires international cooperation on environmental legislation.

By performing what Tuchman calls a "strategic ritual" of objectivity, journalists obscure the scientific consensus on climate change by reporting it as a debate. This framing makes climate breakdown seem less urgent and therefore less newsworthy.

How can we improve? The notion of objectivity needs to be reclaimed through good journalism which invests resources in providing analysis and verification. News organizations are in an important position to explain complex scientific concepts in a language that most people understand, but they need to improve their scientific literacy in order to verify the relative merit of competing claims.

Journalists with a better grasp of the science (and indeed social science) of climate change would be less reliant on press releases, reducing the impact of corporate lobbyists and the need to include their public relations activity as part of the news. However, these suggestions are optimistic considering the wider power structures that constrain how journalists operate.

This post is part of the Covering Climate Now series, a concerted effort among news organizations to put the climate crisis at the forefront of our coverage, and published under a Creative Commons license. The Conversation also runs Imagine, a newsletter in which academics explore how the world can rise to the challenge of climate change. Sign up here.

Hahn's Hits & Misses

There is no shortage of critics when it comes to White Sox general manager Rick Hahn for making what many fans interpret as bone-headed moves since he became GM back in 2013.

He's really taken it on the chin for the free agent signings of Yonder Alonso and Jon Jay prior to this season, purportedly to entice Manny Machado to join his brother-in-law and close friend, respectively. Of course, Machado opted for the multi-millions in San Diego where he's hitting .251 while Alonso was released in early July after being a colossal flop for the Sox. Jay battled injuries before and during the season, earning his spot in White Sox lore as another failed free agent.

Then there was Ervin Santana, a veteran who had won 16 games two years ago and was trying a comeback after being injured most of last season. Santana's tenure on 35th Street was good for about a month in which he started three games without lasting more than five innings in any of them.

Free agent reliever Kelvin Herrera, sporting a 2.82 ERA and 60 career saves over eight seasons, was granted a two-year contract by Hahn. Although Herrera is just 29, his previous skills appear to have escaped his grasp as he's posted a 6.38 ERA and an alarming WHIP of 1.708 as this season grinds to a halt.

So it's entirely understandable at this juncture why Hahn isn't being hailed as a genius when it comes to evaluating and signing free agent talent.

Nevertheless, as questionable as this may sound, this is not an indictment of Hahn's maneuvering, nor am I positing that he is challenging Billy Beane when it comes to putting together all the analytics and intangibles to determine which players are most likely to succeed on the South Side. What it says is that Hahn, like his front office brethren throughout baseball, has an extremely difficult job.

He's not messing with a fantasy team or Draft Kings, which requires more luck than skill. Hahn's livelihood and the success or failure of the White Sox depend in large part on him, and it's all out there for the public to see.

With a rebuilding team like the current group, Hahn has had to attract placeholders, players who fill a short-term assignment until young prospects mature and/or a free agent superstar exhibits far more interest in playing for the White Sox than a guy like Machado.

As mentioned, Alonso and Jay were portrayed as bait to snag Machado, a strategy which failed and may turn out to have been a stroke of good luck for Hahn and the Sox. At the same time, Jay was a .285 lifetime hitter who appeared in 143 games for the Royals and Diamondbacks in 2018, hitting .268 with an on-base percentage of .330. Meanwhile, Alonso was coming off a season in Cleveland where he hit 23 homers and drove in 83 runs. Had both men been as effective this season, they'd still be with the Sox.

In hindsight, each seemed like a decent bet to hold down a spot until long-term help arrived.

While swinging and missing at Jay and Alonso, Hahn did connect splendidly with catcher James McCann, who just might be a long-term fix. After five seasons and a .240 career batting average in Detroit, the Tigers let him go, and Hahn signed him for $2.5 million. Not only is McCann slashing .275/.330/.789 with career highs in home runs (17) and RBIs (57), but his handling of pitchers - most notably Lucas Giolito - has been cited as vital to the development of some of the team's young arms. McCann is just 29 and was named to the American League All-Star team this season. He also won't be a free agent until after next season.

Before the rebuild began when "winning now" was the mantra, Hahn inked free agents such as David Robertson and Melky Cabrera, each of whom had two-plus productive seasons in a Sox uniform. Adam LaRoche also signed on for two years at $25 million, and that, in some ways, signaled that a rebuild wasn't far behind.

LaRoche was a dud. He didn't come close to his National League numbers in his single season with the Sox, but the escapades surrounding his son in the clubhouse, precipitating his premature retirement before the 2016 season, led to the blockbuster trades of Chris Sale, Adam Eaton and Jose Quintana, a trio of Hahn deals that sure look kind of nice right now. Walking away was LaRoche's significant contribution to the foundation of the rebuild.

There's been so many other comings and goings, most of which have borne little fruit. Relief pitcher Jesse Crain (2011-13), who arrived before Hahn was the GM, was very effective until he hurt his arm, but for every Jesse Crain there's been many like Mat Latos, Maikel Cleto, Mike Pelfry and Ronald Belisario.

In another week when this season ends, current placeholders like Welington Castillo and Ryan Goins also will bid adieu.

Hahn may continue with a few stopgap measures, but he's sitting on a pile of White Sox gold, and chances are he's preparing to pull the trigger in hopes of filling holes in right field, DH and pitching. He may not compete with the big boys for the greatest treasures like Astros pitcher Gerrit Cole, who will collect far more than the $13-plus million he's already making along with a five- to ten-year guaranteed contract, but there are a number of talented moundsmen - Zack Wheeler, Madison Bumgarner, Michael Wacha, Hyun-jin Ryu, Collin McHugh - who are in their late 20s or early 30s with varying degrees of success on their resumes who, if healthy, might provide added stability to the Sox staff.

Hahn also will be inquiring about designated hitters since Sox DHs this season are hitting .198 with 14 home runs and 65 RBIs. Edwin Encarnacion and Nelson Cruz, two guys in their late 30s, could put up those numbers before their morning coffee while J.D. Martinez, 32, would be more expensive but equally as capable.

Finding a right fielder who bats left-handed and can catch the ball also is on Hahn's radar. A possible candidate would be the Angels' Kole Calhoun, a former Gold Glove winner who's hit 33 homers this season along with his usual .250 batting average.

Whomever Hahn chases figures to be more than a placeholder at this moment in the rebuild.

Meanwhile, the current crop is putting up numbers that, if they were veterans, would find them accused of late-season salary drives of monumental proportions.

Yoan Moncada is baseball's hottest hitter this month. In 20 games, he's slashing .444/.500/.691 for an OPS of 1.191. With a .316 season's average, Moncada ranks third in the American League. Key to his astounding improvement is that he has reduced his strikeouts from 27 percent a year ago to 21 percent. He's putting more balls in play (.408), spheres traveling routinely at more than 90 mph. Two trips to the IL have cost him about 30 games, so his 77 RBIs and 24 homers are a bit compromised.

Consider if Moncada's strikeouts diminish even a percent or two next season. When this guy hits the ball, it stays hit!

He also is surrounded by teammates Tim Anderson and Jose Abreu, who have one more week to hold onto their league leads in batting average and RBIs.

Meanwhile, Eloy Jimenez is on a tear in September with a .365 batting average, eight home runs and 23 RBIs, giving him 30 and 77 for the season. Eloy's batting average on balls in play this month is a robust .415.

So there are four guys in the lineup, hitting in the two through five spots, who can measure up to any foursome in baseball. Add in McCann, Leury Garcia and Yolmer Sanchez, and you wonder how this team can be 8-12 this month with seven home games to play - three with Cleveland and four with Detroit.

For the season, the White Sox have split 70 games with teams under .500 while going 33-52 against teams above the break-even mark.

It's great entertainment to watch these players develop while we await the arrival of Luis Robert, Nick Madrigal and Michael Kopech, among others. Joining them will be a sprinkling of free agents next spring, and it will be Rick Hahn's responsibility to bring in people who can help rather than simply fill up space.

It Says Here

"Next, a look at today's papers. Why fucking bother?"

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"This isn't about journalism ethics, it's about human ethics."

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It Says Here / Billy Bragg

It says here that the Unions will never learn
It says here that the economy is on the upturn
And it says here we should be proud
That we are free
And our free press reflects our democracy
Those braying voices on the right of the House
Are echoed down the Street of Shame
Where politics mix with bingo and tits
In a money and numbers game
Where they offer you a feature
On stockings and suspenders
Next to a call for stiffer penalties for sex offenders

It says here that this year's prince is born
It says here do you ever wish
That you were better informed
And it says here that we can only stop the rot
With a large dose of Law and Order
And a touch of the short sharp shock
If this does not reflect your view you should understand
That those who own the papers also own this land
And they'd rather you believed
In Coronation Street capers
In the war of circulation, it sells newspapers
Could it be an infringement
Of the freedom of the press
To print pictures of women in states of undress

When you wake up to the fact
That your paper is Tory
Just remember, there are two sides to every story

September 20, 2019

The [Friday] Papers

"If you park your car on the lower level of the Millennium Lakeside Garage under Maggie Daley Park, you might feel like you've just pulled into a subterranean car dealership," Crain'sreports.

"Rows of new and used Volkswagens and Hondas - nearly 400 in total - fill a lot of the space. You might spot a worker painting a Jetta with a spray gun. The level above has a more nautical feel, with dozens of empty boat trailers.

"Yet the garage still isn't close to full, a problem for the international joint venture that paid $370 million in 2016 to lease it and three other city-owned garages under Millennium and Grant parks. With 9,176 spaces, the garages constitute the largest underground parking system in the country. At 3.8 million square feet, it's almost as big as Willis Tower.

"It's actually too big, which is why Rick West, the executive who runs the garages, is exploring creative ways to fill excess space in Lakeside, the easternmost and largest garage, with 3,850 spaces. He'd like to convert part of it into warehouse space, even hiring a brokerage to market the property to logistics firms. But he hasn't landed any tenants yet."

"Do they need all those spaces? No," John Hammerschlag, president of Chicago-based Hammerschlag & Co., which owns several downtown garages, told Crain's. "Will they ever need all those spaces? I doubt it."

3. Disrespecting 90.

The Cubs' vaunted culture has broken down badly this season. For one thing, they sure don't Respect 90 anymore. This kind of thing has happened all too often this season, costing the team bases and quite likely wins.

"Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris may be slipping in the polls nationally, but today she rolled out a fairly impressive list of supporters here in Illinois," Greg Hinz writes for Crain's.

"Fairly" is being fairly generous.

"Heading the list of members of Harris' Leadership Council are congressmen Bobby Rush and Danny Davis, both Chicago Democrats and, like Harris, African American. Also included are City Clerk Anna Valencia, state Sens. Mattie Hunter and Ram Villivalam, state Reps. Bob Morgan and Deb Conroy, and Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering."

Another way to frame this story would be to write that Kamala Harris rolled out a fairly weak list of supporters here in Illinois, mirroring her national struggles to compete with frontrunners Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Harris, in fact, has decided to go all-in on Iowa as a bit of a Hail Mary that we've seen in the past and rarely, if ever, works.

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Releasing a list isn't necessarily news, and it's not necessarily good news just because a campaign tells you it is.

Sweet then dishes up four paragraphs from a press release and supporters' statements.

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Just because a candidate issues a press release about a state "leadership team" doesn't mean you have to republish it! It would be much more interesting to find out why these folks support Harris, how her list compares to those we can expect from other campaigns, and what Harris's prospects look like in the state. Take the press release and report it the fuck out! Who are her major funders here? Who might go her way but is still on the fence? Or, you know, just file it away and use it later if it becomes relevant to anything newsworthy.

5. Illinois' Children Of Donor H898.

"Danielle Rizzo's son is screaming. He is planted in the middle of the lobby of his elementary school, clinging to rainbow-colored blocks as she gently explains that she is here - off schedule, in the middle of the day - to take him to a doctor's appointment. But the first-grader is not listening," the Washington Postreports.

"Happy Meal," he repeats over and over again. "Happy Meal!"

His little brother, who is also going to the appointment, is nearby, not moving. Rizzo is relieved that the two of them are not melting down at the same time, which happens all too often, and firmly guides them out the door.

Rizzo's children, ages 7 and 6, were at the center of one of the most ethically complex legal cases in the modern-day fertility industry. Three years ago, while researching treatment options for her sons, Rizzo says she made an extraordinary discovery: The boys are part of an autism cluster involving at least a dozen children scattered across the United States, Canada and Europe, all conceived with sperm from the same donor. Many of the children have secondary diagnoses of ADHD, dyslexia, mood disorders, epilepsy and other developmental and learning disabilities.

The phenomenon is believed to be unprecedented and has attracted the attention of some of the world's foremost experts in the genetics of autism, who have been gathering blood and spit samples from the families.

The Rizzo family in lives in Bartlett, fyi.

Rizzo turned to a sperm bank when she was 27 years old and a business banker at a JPMorgan Chase branch. She and her partner, who asked that her name not be used to protect her privacy, had been together for eight years. They met while Rizzo was attending community college on a softball scholarship. Rizzo was the team's pitcher; her partner was an assistant coach. In June 2011, when Illinois began issuing civil union licenses to same-sex couples, they were the first in line at the Kane County courthouse.

Rizzo says they were eager to start their family and decided that Rizzo, younger by two years, would carry the baby. For months, the couple scoured online profiles to find just the right sperm donor.

Donor H898 from Idant Laboratories looked like a winner.

He was blond and blue-eyed, 6-foot-1, 240 pounds, and appeared to be smart and accomplished. His profile said he had a master's degree and was working as a medical photographer. His hobbies included long-distance running, reading and art.

And most important, Rizzo says, he had a clean bill of health, according to his profile - having scribbled "NA" and a strikethrough line on all but one of the more than 100 medical questions, including mental health ones, posed by sperm banks. (His paternal grandfather had had prostate cancer at age 85.)

Over the next few months, Rizzo purchased several vials of sperm. The bill came to about $500.

You'll have to click through for the rest.

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New on the Beachwood today . . .

The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #270: Mitch ImpossibleThe autumn of our (unexpected) discontent. Including: Mitch Falsbisky; Only Person In Chicago More Unpopular Than Mitch Trubisky Is Craig Kimbrel; Cubs Lab; The Undertaker; These Cards Will Run!; The Amazin' A's & Yankees; The White Sox Are Still Playing; Chicago Joe Fire; The Sky Is Crying; and The Red Stars Try To Lock Down A Playoff Spot This Weekend.

The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #270: Mitch Impossible

The autumn of our discontent. Including: Mitch Falsbisky; Only Person In Chicago More Unpopular Than Mitch Trubisky Is Craig Kimbrel; Cubs Lab; The Undertaker; These Cards Will Run!; The Amazin' A's & Yankees; The White Sox Are Still Playing; Chicago Joe Fire; The Sky Is Crying; and The Red Stars Try To Lock Down A Playoff Spot This Weekend.

* Baseball Reference: "Drafted by the Kansas City Royals in the 22nd round of the 2012 MLB June Amateur . . . February 8, 2017: Traded by the Kansas City Royals to the Chicago Cubs for Donnie Dewees (minors)."

Nanette Shahbaz writes to the Sun-Times about her and her husband's decision to move to Las Vegas purportedly because of skyrocketing property taxes on their downtown condo. "[P]lus I don't have to sludge through heat like I did through the snow."

Shahbaz, it turns out, is The Cat Lady.

"Shahbaz began her business in 1996 in Chicago, at first taking canine clients as well but quickly dropping that service once winter and Chicago's 50-degree-below windchill temperatures arrived. Walking dogs in such weather was no fun. Now, in sunny Las Vegas, Shahbaz deals only with cats," the Las Vegas Review-Journalreports.

4. Junket Journalism.

The Chicago Architecture Biennial opens to the public today. Some journalists got a "press review" on Tuesday, and as the Tribune's Blair Kamin writes, the biennial paid the way of some of those journalists.

"There's a name for this sort of thing: A junket.

"Are news organizations that use junket-generated content obligated to disclose the arrangement? Should consumers trust the reporting and criticism of journalists whose travel costs are paid for by the event they're covering? Are events trying to buy exposure and influence coverage, or are they are simply getting the word out about worthy nonprofit arts events?"

Yes, no, yes and it doesn't matter.

"It is a way of causing exposure, causing people to become aware," event chairman Jack Guthman told Kamin.

By "causing exposure," Guthman means "buying exposure."

That, my friends, is called public relations. The coverage is being paid for by the covered. Tight newsroom budgets are no excuse for accepting this kind of arrangement.

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And then there's this:

British architecture critic John Jervis, who has written for a variety of design publications, took to Twitter recently to accuse Camron of "exercising a veto over the journalists" that editors choose to cover the biennial.

Later, in a telephone interview, Jervis told me that Camron approached a design magazine editor about sending someone to the event. After the editor proposed sending Jervis, he said, Camron objected and the editor opted to send someone else.

Jervis declined to identify the magazine or the editor. And he didn't say why he was rejected, though he later sent a link to an article he wrote last year that offered a stinging critique of junkets.

The editor "needs to continue this relationship for the good of the magazine," Jervis said in the interview. "All your travel will be done that way. No magazine can afford to send (free-lancers) to Manchester, let alone Chicago."

A Camron director who works with the biennial declined to comment on the firm's interaction with Jervis.

Agency H5, a Chicago marketing firm that handles the biennial's local publicity, said in a statement: "It is standard practice across the cultural field to support journalist travel to cover events and exhibitions. This in no way guarantees the tone or content of the coverage."

* When you extend "support" for journalists to attend events, do you pick and choose who you are willing to subsidize based on their past coverage, or can everyone get in on the gravy train?

* If a critic rips your event, will that critic continue to be offered funding to future events?

But then, these questions are ultimately irrelevant because news organizations shouldn't go along with junkets no matter how purportedly strapped for cash they are. Make your choices and live with them.

Yet it would be. In the arts at least that doesn't tend to come with a quid pro quo. But their new PR is primarily a design agency (or as they put it a Design Lifestyle and Business Innovation Communications Agency) and a v. successful one. I guess it's the start of new approach.

They repeatedly refused to give my editor a reason. As you say, there are strong reasons to feel conflicted about press trips in the arts, but the increasing reality that your presence is conditional on this sort of implicit and ongoing contract is moving up that list

"Waubonsee students who are part of the national group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlan - MEChA - said they were disappointed to not have notice of the visit because they said it silenced them. The group works to spread awareness of immigrant rights, help connect students who are underrepresented minorities and help first-generation students navigate higher education, group leaders said," the Aurura Beacon-Newsreports.

"While touring Jefferson High School in Rockford Monday, dozens of protestors, many wearing red T-shirts, carried signs and gathered outside the school to greet DeVos, according to the Rockford Register Star.

"'Waubonsee tends to show this image that we have a very diverse student population, but we had someone from the Trump administration who has attacked our communities here,' said Giselle Gonzalez, Waubonsee sophomore and president of the MEChA group at the school."

Trump is visiting a replacement/reinforcement barrier, erected in an area where (smaller) barriers had already existed and funded by the US government. His campaign promise was not "replace existing barriers and have taxpayers pay for it." https://t.co/YjHaqqIvgk

There's no dishonesty off switch for Trump; he lies not only to average citizens but to audiences who know he's making most of this stuff up. He made 25 false claims at his NC rally last week -- and, also, 22 in his speech to the House Republican Retreat. https://t.co/zuxdiLieBB

The president promotes another false smear of Rep. Ilhan Omar -- his third false smear of Omar in the last three months, the second baseless smear he has shared from Terrence K. Williams in the last six weeks: https://t.co/xM8vuE5IIZ

September 17, 2019

The [Tuesday] Papers

"High water levels on Lake Michigan this summer have been freaking people out," WBEZ reports. "They've battered the Chicago shoreline, submerged walking paths and swallowed up whole beaches around the lake. They also inspired one anonymous Curious Citizen to ask: How will climate change affect Lake Michigan water levels?"

Good question - and one the media failed to answer (or even ask) in August when they noticed the Lake Michigan shoreline is shrinking.

The WBEZ answer: "Climate Change Is Already Impacting Lake Michigan."

"At least one feature of a changing climate is already affecting the Lake Michigan shoreline, coastal scientist Charles Shabica told the station. "The . . . warmer atmosphere means more intense storms, and more intense storms mean large waves, and large waves mean more damage to structures along the shore."

My former Newsweek colleague Peter Annin, author of Great Lakes Water Wars, told WBEZ: "What we are seeing with climate change now in the Great Lakes region is more rocking and rolling in water levels - higher highs and lower lows and a much more rapid transition between the highs and lows. And that's what's driving people crazy as they try to interface with the Great Lakes, especially Lake Michigan."

Annin left Newsweek to dedicate himself to environmental journalism and advocacy.

Also, from WBEZ: "In addition to shoreline erosion, intense storms are predicted to increase agricultural runoff and sewage overflows, both of which contribute to pollution."

More, please.

China's Chicago Spy Trains
"America's next fight with China is unfolding at a glistening new factory in Chicago, which stands empty except for the shells of two subway cars and space for future business that is unlikely to come," the New York Timesreports.

"A Chinese state-owned company called CRRC Corporation, the world's largest train maker, completed the $100 million facility this year in the hopes of winning contracts to build subway cars and other passenger trains for American cities like Chicago and Washington.

"But growing fears about China's economic ambitions and its potential to track and spy on Americans are about to quash those plans. Congress is soon expected to approve legislation that would effectively bar the company from competing for new contracts in the United States, citing national security and economic concerns. The White House has expressed its support for the effort."

Leave the spying to Facebook and the NSA!

"This summer, CRRC replaced the Chinese flag outside the factory with a Chicago flag. It has also retained two Washington lobbying firms, Squire Patton Boggs and Crossroads Strategies, to plead its case in Congress.

"It may be too late. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said he helped sponsor the bill to prevent the American transit system from being 'controlled by a foreign country that is not particularly friendly to us.'

"'They spell out in black and white they're going to use foreign investment as a weapon, and we're taking action to defend ourselves,' Mr. Brown said."

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"CRRC Sifang, a subsidiary of a Chinese rail car company, employs 78 people at the recently opened facility in Hegewisch that it built to make rail cars for the CTA. Once production has fully ramped up to handle the $1.3 billion, 10-year contract, the facility could employ as many as 170 people," the Tribunereported in August.

"The proposal would not affect the current CTA contract, which calls for building up to 846 new 'L' cars at a cost of $1.6 million each, according to both CRRC and the bill's supporters.

"But if the measure becomes law, it would interfere with CRRC's plans to grow its business by taking orders from transit systems across the country. It would deflate the great expectations for the plant, which was hailed by Chicago officials at its 2017 groundbreaking as marking the return of CTA rail manufacturing after a 50-year absence.

"CRRC has already put in a bid to build rail cars with the Long Island Railroad in New York and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Agency in Washington, D.C., said Marina Popovic, human resources director and legal counsel for CRRC. But no new work would mean no need for workers."

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"U.S. Congresswoman Robin Kelly, a Chicago Democrat whose district includes the Hegewisch factory, voted for the National Defense Authorization Act, which included the Chinese rail car ban, but declined to comment on it, according to a spokeswoman."

Well, not just according to a spokesperson. She refused to comment.

"U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, another Chicago Democrat and the most senior member from Illinois on the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, also voted for the bill, though a spokesman said the vote was not based solely on the rail car language.

"The entry of Chinese State-Owned Enterprises into this country poses a huge threat to America's economic livelihood and national security," Lipinski said in a statement. "We need to be focused on figuring out how to create a thriving domestic transit and bus rolling stock industry right here in the United States as well as protecting our domestic freight supplier industry."

"But Lipinski added that he is aware that the CRRC factories in Chicago and elsewhere provide good-paying jobs to hundreds of people. 'We need to be careful about taking any action that could affect their livelihoods and families,' Lipinski said."

"A monumental overhaul of the Chicago Transit Authority's rail car line was launched Wednesday with the approval of a $1.3 billion contract to replace about half of its fleet - the biggest car purchase in the agency's history.

"The new generation of 846 rail cars will be built at a new manufacturing facility on the Southeast Side.

"The winning bidder to build the 7000 Series cars is CSR Sifang America, whose partners include the Chinese state-owned rail car manufacturing company CRRC Qingdao Sifang and CSR America, which handles North American operations. The same manufacturer is currently building cars for the Boston transit system."

I guess that's a big deal. Then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel certainly tried to make the most of it, but that's not exactly a confirming piece of evidence. Still:

"In a buoyant news conference at CTA headquarters after the board's vote, Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the deal historic and said he hoped the facility could also be used for other rail car orders from around the country. He expects suppliers to be drawn to the Hegewisch facility, bringing even more jobs. He said the deal was an example of the city using its purchasing power to create local employment, as it did when Chicago police ordered its new cars from the South Side Ford plant."

"Mayor Rahm Emanuel is going this week to Asia, where a contingent of city officials plan to meet with business leaders amid a trade war between the U.S. and China.

"At the top of Emanuel's agenda is visiting a Chinese business that has a $1.3 billion contract with the CTA to manufacture train cars on the South Side.

"CRRC Sifang America hopes to replace about half the CTA's fleet of train cars at a new manufacturing facility in the Southeast Side Hegewisch neighborhood. But certain parts for the rail cars, which are expected to be delivered starting at the end of 2019, will be made in China. Emanuel told the Tribune he wants to make sure the deal isn't damaged by [Trump's] trade dispute."

"A monumental overhaul of the Chicago Transit Authority's rail car line has gotten caught up in the nation's trade war with China.

"Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese products are driving up the price of the project, which involves replacing about half of the CTA's fleet. The transit agency and the manufacturer of the new cars disagree about who will bear the additional costs. If the CTA has to pay more, riders could eventually end up footing the bill through higher fares."

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Holy Fuck
"Astronomers have discovered the most massive example yet of the dead stars known as neutron stars, one almost too massive to exist, a new study finds," Spacereports.

"Neutron stars, like black holes, are corpses of stars that died in catastrophic explosions known as supernovas. When a star goes supernova, the core of its remains collapses under the strength of its own gravitational pull. If this remnant is massive enough, it may form a black hole, which has gravity so powerful that not even light can escape. A less massive core will form a neutron star, so named because its gravity is strong enough to crush protons together with electrons to form neutrons.

"Neutron stars are as mysterious as they are fascinating," study lead author Thankful Cromartie at the University of Virginia and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, both in Charlottesville, Virginia, said in a statement. "These city-sized objects are essentially ginormous atomic nuclei."

"Ginormous, a humorous blend of gigantic and enormous, owes much of its recent popularity to its appearance in the 2003 movie Elf, where it is enthusiastically uttered by actor Will Ferrell," Merriam-Webster notes. "However, when Merriam-Webster added it to the Collegiate Dictionary in 2007, editors made note of the fact that it could then be found at least as far back as 1948, when it was recorded in a dictionary of military slang. Recent research has found the word used in British newspapers as early as 1942."

What could have been, Kim Deal . . .

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The Lincoln Park Camel
It turns out there's a Chicago camel.

Not sure if there's more than one, but this fellow/lady was spotted by my sister-in-law Sue Rhodes when she was in town with my brother last week.

*

"Contrary to popular belief, a camel's hump doesn't hold water. Instead, the hump serves as a reservoir for energy-rich fat, which the camel can metabolize for energy when food is scarce," the zoo says.

Per pool, here's Trump on the death of Cokie Roberts: "I never met her. She never treated me nicely. But I would like to wish her family well. She was a professional and I respect professionals...Never treated me well, but I certainly respect her as a professional."

September 16, 2019

SportsMonday: The Unbalanced, Obsessive-Compulsive Matt Nagy

One thing we have learned about coach Matt Nagy over the last six months or so: If the man isn't careful he tends to wander into the intersection of obsessive and compulsive.

He did it with the Bears' search for a kicker early in the summer, and his play-calling very much had that feel on Sunday as the Bears pulled out a heart-pounding 16-14 victory over the Broncos. Paging Andy Reid! I know you have plenty to worry about with the Chiefs (although they look like they are going to kill just about everyone again this year), but we Bears fans sure would appreciate it if you would have a chat with your protégé in Chicago about maintaining an even keel.

Bringing in nine guys to take a shot at the place-kicking job and having them all take 43-yard kicks (because that was the distance of the kick Cody Parkey missed at the end of last season's crushing playoff loss) in front of reporters at the end of a training session? Troubling.

Oh and it failed. We all remember that right? The kicker is the guy the Bears traded a seventh-round pick for completely outside of the nine-man tryout fiasco. Yes the pick is conditional - on Pineiro being on the active roster for at least five games this season - but I'm thinking at this point the condition will be met.

Then we had Sunday's play-calling performance.

Responding to a game in which you called almost five times as many passing plays as running plays by calling way too many runs in the next game? More troubling. How was this guy able to find the right balance between run and pass right from the get-go last year and keep it going all season long and then completely lose it in the first two games of the next season?

I'm afraid I don't have an answer to that one.

Along these lines I would like to register a complaint. Hey NFL, please don't ever do that to us again. Please do not give us Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth calling the Bears game one week and Dick Stockton and Mark Schlereth calling it the next.

Despite being the announcing tandem that generally calls the most boring game of the weekend on Fox the last several years, Stockton and Schlereth continue to hang on to their jobs. You would think that there would be a form of relegation going on here. The announcing team that does the most boring games should be lopped off at the end of every season and other guys should get a shot.

But no, Stockton and Schlereth are still yammering away for fun and profit. Stockton mis-calls at least six plays a game and even worse, Schlereth still hasn't met a hoary old football cliché he doesn't love.

Some of the worst of it happened during the Bears' only touchdown drive. We get it Mark, you are a former offensive lineman and good running games are just about your favorite things in the world. But the successful teams in the NFL the last decade or so have almost always passed first. They have used the pass to set up the run.

But there was Schlereth urging the Bears to keep pounding away, keep running the ball and running the ball and running the ball. That worked - barely - on the Bears' lone touchdown drive. It did not work in subsequent drives in which the Bears had the chance to put things away with just a couple first downs.

The primary feature of the best play-calling schemes in the NFL is not complicated. It is balance. The best teams find the balance. In the first week, the Bears passed too much. The coach over-corrected and the next week, they ran too much. And of course plenty of this stuff depends on personnel, i.e., you need to have a good enough quarterback to throw the various passes a successful offense needs.

The Bears squeaked out of Denver with a 1-1 record. They face a desperate, 0-2 Washington team next Monday night. Hopefully the coach and his assistants can use that extra prep time on charting an effective course back to balance.

Start Now!

"We were shooting truthfully to be .500 or better," White Sox manager Rickey Renteria said a week ago. On Sunday, his team suffered its 84th loss in what will be its seventh consecutive losing season.

Renteria might be excused for his optimism for this season after last year's edition, losers of 100 games, went 29-38 after the All-Star Game, a stark improvement over the first half of the season. And his bright and bushy prognostication looked reasonable when the action halted for the annual mid-season classic this past July as the Sox stood at 42-44.

However, just when we thought that .500 was within reach, the White Sox have had trouble beating almost anyone. After losing series' last week to the Royals and Mariners, two teams with a combined 117-183 record, Renteria's bunch sunk to 19 games under the break-even mark, thanks to a 23-40 showing in the second half.

The scene in Seattle over the weekend was especially revealing as the fellows dropped a 10-inning 2-1 decision on Saturday when former Sox Omar Narvaez hit a ball off the top of the right field wall and was credited with a home run rather than a two-out double. Leading 10-5 on Sunday going into the bottom of the eighth, the Sox bullpen coughed up a sure-fire victory as the Mariners walked off with an 11-10 decision, the winning run scoring on a bases-loaded walk.

So when Renteria also said last week that "I'm expecting this [losing] is it. We are finishing this season, and we are talking about coming back into next season ready to battle," his credibility was close to zilch.

Despite some notable individual performances, are we to believe that progress is being made? Spin doctors far more adept than Renteria and general manager Rick Hahn might face a stiff challenge to explain the steps forward.

The team's problems were on full display in the last three games. Sox pitchers walked 24 batters while striking out 25, just an awful showing. While the boys scored some runs, the batsmen drew just five bases on balls while fanning 33 times.

Too small a sample size, you say? Not really. Sox pitchers this season have issued the third most walks among all 30 teams, while the hitters have drawn the fewest free passes of any team. They strike out more often than all but five other clubs, and they are 24th in on-base percentage. That, my friends, goes a long way explaining why this team is headed for another 90 losses.

There's no question that the emergence of the young core of Yoan Moncada, Tim Anderson, Eloy Jimenez, Lucas Giolito and others provide promise for the future. However, without fixing the already-mentioned deficits, this team will be hard-pressed to compete with baseball's elite.

Of course, help apparently is on the way. USA Today has named outfielder Luis Robert its Minor League Player of the Year, proclaiming, "He moves with the almost effortless grace of a certain Hall of Famer," a direct reference to Ken Griffey, Jr.

Previous honorees include Vladimir Guerrero, Jr., Ronald Acuna, Jr., Alex Bregman, Kris Bryant and Xander Bogaerts. It would be cool if Robert, 22, had a "Jr." for a tag, but after slashing .328/.376/1.001 to go along with 32 home runs, 92 RBIs and 36 stolen bases over three minor league levels, his name could be Joe Smith and the anticipation would be just a stimulating.

Robert walked 28 times this season in 122 games while striking out 129. The Sox will live with that since his on-base percentage was .376.

According to people like Hahn, the service time issue never is a consideration when it comes to the timing of promoting players like Robert to the big league club. It's just coincidence that Robert may not appear on the South Side until the 2020 season is a few weeks old. But whenever he arrives, he'll immediately assume a spot in the White Sox outfield, which has some gaping holes. Most likely he'll play center between Jimenez in left and whoever winds up in right. Possibly Adam Engel, who homered Sunday and has shown signs of improvement at the plate, will be the centerfielder with Robert in right.

The scenario for the other top prospect, second baseman Nick Madrigal, is not as clear. The Oregon State product, who also is 22, had a splendid season following Robert from Winston-Salem to Birmingham and then Charlotte, although Madrigal's game is much different than Robert's. Madrigal is the table-setter for the likes of power guys like Robert. Madrigal hit .311 for the season with an on-base percentage of .377, due to the fact that he walked 44 times while striking out just 16 in 120 games. He doesn't hit home runs. He gets on base. Furthermore, he made only four errors all season.

Madrigal does what the current group doesn't do: He walks far more than he strikes out.

However, it's not as though the current Sox second baseman, Yolmer Sanchez, necessarily is in need of replacement. One analytic formula (UZR) FanGraphs uses for rating defenders lists Sanchez as the best defensive second baseman in the game. After making three errors in the season's first five games, Sanchez has been charged with just four miscues since, handling 590 chances flawlessly. He has a strong arm, turns the pivot on the double play, and his range is admirable.

Sanchez, a switch-hitter, is batting .247 with an OBP of .318. Both are close to the major league averages. Unlike Madrigal, Sanchez, who is 27, strikes out about 21 percent of his at-bats, but similar to Madrigal, he has just two home runs this season.

Sanchez is very popular among his teammates, and his antics - pouring Gatorade over himself was a real crowd-pleaser last season - have become a team staple.

Sanchez has performed better than expectations, which creates a bit of a dilemma since Madrigal, if he can approach what he's done so far at the major league level, represents exactly what this team needs. If Madrigal assumes the regular second base assignment, then Sanchez becomes the utility infielder, a role that also fits Leury Garcia. Might a trade be in the works during the offseason?

One prospect getting playing time as the season winds down is catcher/first baseman Zack Collins, who does have a discerning eye at the plate. Despite an anemic .123 batting average, the 24-year-old has walked 10 times in 64 plate appearances. Compare that to Anderson's 12 free passes in 474 trips to the plate.

Of course, Anderson is vying for a batting title, hitting .332 as the Sox travel to Minnesota to open a three-game set beginning tonight. His approach at the plate obviously is far different than a guy like Collins. Anderson has become successful at hitting pitches off the outside corner to right field. Taking those pitches apparently is not an option. He averages 3.40 pitches per plate appearance compared to the MLB average of 3.93.

That's fine as long as the lineup includes guys who exhibit greater patience, and right now the Sox don't have any of those. Anderson has been hitting second in the lineup more often than not, usually behind leadoff man Garcia, whose on-base percentage is a mere .306.

Madrigal possibly could fill the need for a leadoff man who makes contact, takes some pitches, and gets on base. If Collins can cut down on his strikeouts, he could be another man in the order who sees a lot of pitches and takes his walks.

None of this will make much difference unless Sox pitchers miraculously start throwing many more strikes. The idea that young pitchers like Dylan Cease, Reynaldo Lopez, Jace Fry and others are works in progress who will develop control as they mature is simply that - an idea. In this era of home runs, putting hitters on base without swinging the bat is a portent for calamity.

The Sox have 13 games remaining, seven of which are against Detroit, losers already of 104 games. The Sox have to win eight to avert 90 losses. You would think that could be a reasonable, although sad, goal. Forget the talk about 2020. Finish strong.

"Consider it another validating moment for Nagy, whose kicker competition tactics in the offseason were often questioned and criticized. Sunday, the winner of that competition saved the game, and maybe the Bears' season."

* Bears radio announcer Jeff Joniak: "The Bears' kicking contest was mocked, but they got the right guy."

I've already called out the narrative that Pineiro "won" Matt Nagy's offseason kicking contest, and now I'm going to have to call out the narrative that Sunday's performance "validated" Matt Nagy's offseason kicking contest.

First, let us recall this item from September 5th:

Unbearable
In case you haven't heard, the Bears open the NFL season tonight at Soldierz Field against the Packers. But we may already have in hand the season's worst take:

Hard to argue with Chris Tabor's defense of the way the #Bears went about their exhaustive kicker search: "You say unconventional ... If we would just do the same thing over and over again and expect different results, I think that's the definition of insanity."

Second, none of the nine kickers in their competition made the team! Once they were done with their scientifically, consultant-added kick-off, they went out and traded for Eddy Pineiro instead!

Oh, but that's not all. The Bears had such confidence in Pineiro that they then tried to trade for Baltimore's Kaare Vedvik. The Vikings got him instead - and he was so bad they released him.

So yeah, finding it hard to argue against the Bears' approach takes an awful lot of strenuous work, beat-sweetening and blue-and-orange-colored glasses.

-

Back to today:

You could argue that Pineiro "won" the offseason kicking competititon because he's the Bears' kicker, but the fact is that the kicking contest that was mocked didn't produce Pineiro. It is true that Pineiro had to win the job over two kickers who emerged from the contest, Chris Blewitt and Elliott Fry, but that's a thin reed to connect Pineiro to the spectacle many folks found bizarre. Pineiro would have been available to acquire in a trade regardless of whether Nagy held a nine-kicker contest. The only thing Pineiro had to do with Nagy's methods was competing under "Augusta Silence" conditions.

It's also hard to say Pineiro won the job when the Bears tried to replace him immediately with Vedvik.

That's not to take anything away from Pineiro. He seems like fun, and I actually approve of nicknaming him Eddie Dinero/Eddie Money.

But he did not win Nagy's contest, and therefore his performance Sunday did not vindicate Nagy's methods. In fact, the way Pineiro came to the team essentially invalidates Nagy's contest, because it failed to produce the team's kicker.

*

Also: One game does not validate anything. If Pineiro goes on to lose the next game for the Bears, is Nagy suddenly invalidated? It's preposterous.

You don't have to create and propagate narratives. Stop with the concepts. Just report. That's what Sports Illustrated did, and that's why we know how crazy the path to Pineiro actually was.

*

Reminder: I don't focus on this sort of thing because I care so much about the Bears and sports, but because I care so much about journalism. Sports coverage is a terrific parallel to political coverage in so many ways, but mostly in mindthink. This is part of how news gets manufactured, and untethered to reality. And pretty soon you hear every Jane and Dick on the street repeating the narratives and much of a citizenry has been led to believe that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. Journalism has a quality problem; most of it isn't very good. Most of it doesn't hold up under fact-checking. Much of it hurts people, and makes us stupider.

*

Reminder: Rahm Emanuel's early observation that the media largely trafficked in narratives has largely guided his messaging techniques.

Of course, he's not alone in the political world: People like David Axelrod get big bucks to create and embed narratives - just as elite journalists get relatively big bucks to accept those narratives and push them along or come up with their own out of their own little heads.

I hope so, but disgraced double-doinker Cody Parkey made three field goals in three attempts in his first Bears game, against the Packers. It's. One. Game.

*

And yet, Hoge:

"And his kicker made the kick, leaving just one question from this reporter to Eddy Pineiro: Do the Bears finally have their kicker?"

That's your one question, and to the kicker? Wrong!

First, it's a question with an unknowable answer. Second, the kicker is the wrong guy to ask. Maybe ask some kicking experts!

I would have liked some reporters to actually ask Pineiro about the actual kick - how he lined up, the effect of being a mile high, the angle, the hold, the snap, what was said on the sideline before he went out there, how he felt in warm-ups - instead of how he felt.

*

Reminds me of some Cubs reporters stating the Cubs had "found their offense" upon the return of Ben Zobrist and the call-up of Nico Hoerner, right before they went back to hitting less than a blackjack player at 17.

At least the media has finally come around on Mitch Trubisky. He sucks.

Former Bear and current commentator Patrick Mannelly said on The Score this morning that Nagy's strategy Sunday was clearly to "limit the decision-making of Mitch Trubisky."

Trubisky is now someone the Bears have to scheme around.

"(Nagy's) limited by the guy with the ball in his hands," Mannelly said.

Even Hoge, a big Trubisky booster who picked the Bears to win the Super Bowl this year, says he's not seeing a quarterback who is processing information fast enough, which is a friendly way of saying Trubisky isn't smart enough to run Nagy's offense - or maybe any NFL offense.

Hoge also said he sees "evidence that he's not the franchise savior they thought he was when he was picked No. 2."

If Trubisky's lost Hoge . . .

Contests Better Than Nagy's

Seinfeld's.

*

Gene Hackman's.

-

Remembering Daniel Johnston
"Daniel Johnston, a singer-songwriter and visual artist whose childlike, haunted songs brought him acclaim as one of America's most gifted outsider voices, was found dead on Wednesday morning at his home in Waller, Tex., outside Houston. He was 58," the New York Timesreports.

Johnston appeared twice on this site.

At the Bottom Lounge in 2012:

*

At the Vic in 2017:

-

Remembering Eddie Money
"Eddie Money, whose string of rock hits in the late 1970s and '80s included 'Baby Hold On' and 'Two Tickets to Paradise,' died on Friday in Los Angeles. He was 70," the New York Timesreports.

Eddie Money appeared three times on this site.

* In 2009, he was No. 60 of our Trivial Pursuit: Music Choice Edition feature: "Eddie Money was born Eddie Mahoney." The legal department of Music Choice made us take this feature down because somehow they "owned" the trivia facts we were cadging from their channel, a proposition our lawyer basically acceded to, as crazy as it sounds.

I was surprised to find we never captured him in performance here in our The Week In Chicago Rock and The Weekend In Chicago Rock features, though those started maybe halfway through the site's life and were discontinued in the last year or so.

Remembering Ric Ocasek
"Ric Ocasek, the songwriter, rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the Cars, was found dead on Sunday afternoon at his townhouse in Manhattan," Jon Pareles writes for New York Times.

"The New York Police Department confirmed the death but did not give a cause. Sources have differed on Mr. Ocasek's age; some say he was 70, but a few public records and previous articles about him suggest that he was 75.

"From 1978 to 1988, Mr. Ocasek (pronounced oh-CASS-eck) and the Cars merged a vision of romance, danger and nocturnal intrigue and the concision of new wave music with the sonic depth and ingenuity of radio-friendly rock. The Cars managed to please both punk-rock fans and a far broader pop audience, reaching into rock history while devising fresh, lush extensions of it."

Huh, I always pronounced it oh-CASE-eck.

*

I have mixed feelings about The Cars. And I loathed the songs and videos that people like this are tweeting out:

-> I didn't bother to check a style guide, but I always get tripped up whether I should use World War 2 or World War II. I mean, wars aren't Super Bowls.

*

The U.S. Supreme Court's Border Wall Fiasco
"It is not just that the Court is siding, again and again, with Republicans and the Trump administration that causes us worry. It is that it does so on such specious grounds."

An autocratic president has captured the U.S. Senate, the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice, the Border Patrol, ICE and other arms of the government, and has participated in corrupting an election. This is how it happens - is happening - here.

The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #269: Dead Team(s) WalkingWinter is here. Plus: After Over 70 Years, The Cubs On WGN Is Coming To An End; Tim Anderson Chases Obsolete Award; I AM SO SICK OF MITCH TRUBISKY; Ryan Pace Had One Job This Offseason And He Failed At It Miserably; 'Scuse Us While We Kiss The Sky; Blackhawks Open Training Camp Again!; A Chicago Bull Is Dominating The World Cup; Really Good Chicago Fire News Broke While We Were Recording This; and Chicago Red Stars Rolling.

$5400 for our baby who was delivered stillborn, for attempted resuscitation. She wasn't enrolled in our insurance because she was never alive. From the hospital where I worked as a physician. #medtwitterhttps://t.co/5A5RZEk44I

September 13, 2019

The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #269: Dead Team(s) Walking

Winter is here. Plus: After Over 70 Years, The Cubs On WGN Is Coming To An End; Tim Anderson Chases Obsolete Award; I AM SO SICK OF MITCH TRUBISKY; Ryan Pace Had One Job This Offseason And He Failed At It Miserably; 'Scuse Us While We Kiss The Sky; Blackhawks Open Training Camp Again!; A Chicago Bull Is Dominating The World Cup; Really Good Chicago Fire News Broke While We Were Recording This; and Chicago Red Stars Rolling.

* Cubs losing every phase of the game: second-worst defense in the league, an offense even more broken than last year's including the worst production in the majors out of the leadoff spot, a bullpen melting down nightly and a 1 1/2-man rotation: Yu Darvish and Kyle Hendricks at home.

The U.S. Supreme Court's Border Wall Fiasco

It was just over a month ago that the Supreme Court stayed the injunction prohibiting President Trump from reappropriating funds to construct the border wall. The stay has largely gotten lost in the never-ending cycle of Trump administration news - and like many of those stories, this one dropped late on a Friday evening: By a 5-4* vote, with the conservatives in the majority, the Court allowed the president to reappropriate funds that were originally set aside for the military. The decision will allow construction on the wall to begin.

Since this case was neither fully briefed nor argued, the Court did not issue a full opinion explaining its decision. Instead, the Court released a summary order suggesting there were several reasons for granting the stay. But it provided only one reason to think that the challengers would ultimately lose: "[T]he plaintiffs have no cause of action to obtain review of the Acting Secretary's compliance with Section 8005, the statutory provision that allows the Defense Secretary to transfer funds, when doing so 'is necessary in the national interest,' and the funds will be used 'for military functions (except military construction).'"

Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan would have denied the stay request entirely. And the asterisk to the 5-4 vote breakdown is that *Justice Breyer would have stayed the decision announcing the injunction, but only with respect to the government's ability "to finalize the contracts at issue," "not to begin construction" on the wall.

The Court's decision is troubling for many reasons. We will focus on just two of them.

First, the Court's reasoning does not make much sense - which suggests that the Court has reached a level of deference toward the executive branch, and perhaps toward the Trump administration in particular, that is cause for concern.

Second, the decision is another reminder of how the Court can tinker with the availability of remedies for government misconduct without adjusting the scope of available rights - which has the effect of giving the government much of what it wants without instigating as much meaningful public scrutiny or accountability.

First, the merits of the Court's analysis. And before that, some front-end definitions for those readers (and co-authors . . . ) who are not law professors who teach federal courts:

When Congress passes a law, they can also create what is called a private right of action, which is a right for plaintiffs to sue people (including government actors) for violating some statute. Without a private right of action, even people whose statutory rights are violated can't always sue someone in court.

For example, in Alexander v. Sandoval, the plaintiffs argued that Alabama's English-only drivers examinations violated a DOJ regulation promulgated under Section 602 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - and impeded their ability to get drivers licenses in the process. Before getting to that argument, though, the Court held that the plaintiffs could not sue to enforce the regulation because Congress had not given them a private right of action to enforce the statute. In Sandoval, the Court announced the general rule that private rights of action to enforce federal law must be created by Congress.

But the requirement of a private right of action applies only to alleged violations of statutes, not to alleged violations of the Constitution. If you want to sue someone for violating one of Congress's statutes, you need Congress's go-ahead to do so. If you want to sue someone for violating your constitutional rights, however, you should be able to go right ahead and do that.

You can think of the distinction like this: when the Constitution was ratified by "the People" (at least the white, male people) the People delegated to Congress the authority to pass laws which they (Congress) could change and alter as they please. But Congress can't just change the Constitution as they please, because that power is retained by the People under Article V. When someone violates a statute they are violating Congress's will and therefore Congress is responsible for determining what happens next, not individual citizens. But when someone violates the Constitution they are violating the rights retained by the People, and therefore individuals can sue to get federal courts to stop their rights from being violated.

Sandoval involved only the claim that Alabama had violated a DOJ regulation/federal statute, not a Constitutional violation. That is not the nature of the border wall suit. The complaint in the border wall case alleges that the president violated both statutes and the Constitution when he reappropriated money to construct the wall. And the complaint is explicit on this point: The plaintiffs' second claim for relief is specifically entitled "Separation of Powers, Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution." (That is also their third claim, and the fourth claim alleges a violation of the "Presentment Clause, Article I, Section 7, Clause 2 [of the Constitution].") And in contrast to the rule that Congress must authorize suits to enforce particular statutes, the Court has emphasized that "the ability to sue to enjoin unconstitutional actions by state and federal officers is the creation of courts of equity, and reflects a long history of judicial review of illegal executive action, tracing back to England." (Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Ctr., Inc.)

Even when someone wants to sue because of a violation of statute, a statute explicitly creating a private right of action is not always required. In particular, a private right of action is not required to seek equitable relief (i.e., declaratory judgments and injunctions rather than money) to restrain the executive branch. And that is what the plaintiffs in the border wall suit are seeking - equitable relief. The Court has said that "the equity jurisdiction of the federal courts is the jurisdiction in equity exercised by the High Court of Chancery in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution," (Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo v. Alliance Bond Fund), and so "equitable relief . . . is traditionally available" even in the absence of a statutory cause of action (Armstrong).

Over the years, the Court has consistently stated this rule in various ways:

We ordinarily presume that Congress intends the executive to obey its statutory commands and, accordingly, that it expects the courts to grant relief when an executive agency violates such a command. (Bowen v. Mich. Academy of Family Physicians)

Or take this footnote from Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB, in which the Court, just 10 years ago, allowed a private party to seek an injunction invalidating the structure of the PCAOB on constitutional grounds:

The Government asserts that "petitioners have not pointed to any case in which this Court has recognized an implied private right of action directly under the Constitution to challenge governmental action under the Appointments Clause or separation-of-powers principles." The Government does not appear to dispute such a right to relief as a general matter, without regard to the particular constitutional provisions at issue here. See, e.g., Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko, 534 U.S. 61, 74 (2001) (equitable relief "has long been recognized as the proper means for preventing entities from acting unconstitutionally"); Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678, 684 (1946) ("[I]t is established practice for this Court to sustain the jurisdiction of federal courts to issue injunctions to protect rights safeguarded by the Constitution"); see also Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 149, 165, 167 (1908). If the Government's point is that an Appointments Clause or separation-of-powers claim should be treated differently than every other constitutional claim, it offers no reason and cites no authority why that might be so.

You can make the same point about the Appropriations Clause or Presentment Clause, in addition to the border wall plaintiffs' separation-of-powers claims. Some of the above cases underscore that the Court has occasionally contrasted the general availability of suits that seek equitable relief for constitutional violations with its stinginess when it comes to suits that seek damages for constitutional violations.

But the important point is that the Court has, time and time again, agreed to review an equitable claim that the president or an agency exceeded its constitutional or statutory powers - including in major presidential power cases like Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer or Dames & Moore v. Regan.

To be sure, Congress can make the choice to preclude equitable claims in some cases. But there is no argument that Congress did so here - except by failing to explicitly create an affirmative cause of action, which the cases cited above make perfectly clear does not deprive the plaintiffs of a cause of action. More importantly, the plaintiffs' suit isn't even to enforce these statutes: The plaintiffs' claim is that the president lacks the funds and can't appropriate them under the Constitution; the administration's defense is that a statute (in particular, section 8005) allows the president to appropriate the relevant funds.

In fairness, there is some slippage between at least one of the constitutional arguments here and a statutory claim. Under the governing Youngstown framework, in order to figure out whether Article II authorizes some presidential action, you look to see whether Congress has authorized the action - including through statute (or through acquiescence). But it doesn't follow that there is an exception to the general rule of judicial review of illegal executive action when the equitable claim for relief is that the president exceeded his constitutional powers. That exception would contradict the rule that equitable relief against illegal executive action is presumptively available.

The weakness of the single merits argument that the Court made to support its conclusion substantiates the concern motivating one of Linda Greenhouse's recent columns - that the costs of this decision include the Court's reputation. It is not just that the Court is siding, again and again, with Republicans and the Trump administration that causes us worry. It is that it does so on such specious grounds.

But that is just the first concern with the Court's stay order. The second concern is the implications of the Court's position, which is part of a recent trend of withdrawing remedies in cases involving constitutional or statutory violations. The general gist of the trend is that he Court has, over time, whittled away the availability of different remedies for constitutional violations without modifying the scope of the underlying rights. Think of the exclusionary rule (where the Court has crafted myriad exceptions), suits for damages (where the Court has expanded the scope of qualified immunity), or habeas corpus (where the Court has likewise ratcheted up the threshold for relief). Leah has written about this phenomenon in this article.

One of the concerns with this trend is that it allows the Court to practically and effectively authorize unlawful government action and restrict rights (since the rights are unenforceable, except as refracted through the Court's remedial standards) without having to be accountable for doing so. Decisions that turn on technical questions like the existence of a cause of action or the scope of qualified immunity tend to capture less public attention and coverage than decisions about the scope of the underlying constitutional rights. (Consider, for example, Carpenter v. United States, which generated a ton of commentary and coverage when the Court recognized that the Fourth Amendment is implicated by extensive government GPS tracking. Mr. Carpenter's conviction was subsequently upheld by the lower federal courts because the court concluded that the evidence did not have to be excluded from his trial, in light of one of the exceptions to the exclusionary rule.) Thus, these decisions allow the Court to accomplish the same troubling consequences without any of the accompanying accountability or scrutiny.

There is at least one upcoming case this term that could be a part of this trend - a case that actually presents the question whether the plaintiffs have a cause of action. That case is Hernandez v. Mesa, which is now back up at the Court for a second time. The case involves the tragic shooting of a 15-year old Mexican national who was allegedly hiding under the culvert at the Texas-Mexico border when a customs and border patrol officer shot and killed him without provocation, in violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. (His family alleges in the complaint that he and his friends were playing a game where they would run up and touch the United States side of the border fence.) The question the Court will address is whether the plaintiffs have a cause of action to sue the CBP officer who shot and killed their son for damages.

The case may not garner a lot of headlines or attention. But it is deeply significant when thinking about how to hold law enforcement officers accountable for executive overreach, including unlawful killings. And like the border wall case apparently did, the case now depends on whether the plaintiffs have a remedy for the unlawful action. That may not be as easy to explain or as headline grabbing as an issue like "did the officer violate the Fourth Amendment?" but it is no less important, as the border wall case underscores.

Disclosure: Leah is among the counsel to the Hernandez family in Hernandez v. Mesa.

Sinclair, ABC Light AOC On Fire

It's insidious. Sinclair tried to buy Tribune Media, which owns WGN in Chicago. WGN is a 70-y-o station, was a Superstation in Cable era. Now the Rickets fam, who owns the Cubs, are yanking Cubs games off WGN and starting a paystation on Sinclair. They are trump supporters. https://t.co/vv45sBBMYr

Many of the sites were thought to be closed or locked away forever or believed to never have existed. Some of the war-changing events described here were ignored for decades by military historians. With historical and contemporary photos, the book opens the eyes of both a new and older generation of readers, in an exploration of the actual locations that changed history.

O'Connor (www.historyarticles.com) has had many firsts over the years, as a contributor to the Chicago Tribune, Naval History magazine, British Heritage, and other publications, including being the first to write about Churchill's secret war rooms in 1977. The U.S. Naval Institute, in 2000, awarded him "Author of the Year," acknowledging his writings as "significant contributions to the history of World War II."

The book brings to life the side of the war few have seen. Many military history readers are unaware that all five of the Atlantic Nazi U-boat bunker bases not only exist in nearly their original appearance but can also be visited.

Many of the one-time Army Air Force bases in England contain parts of runways, crew quarters, chapels and hangars.

In Nuremberg, Hitler's vast parade grounds with intact grandstands, half-finished 50,000 capacity congress hall, and even his reviewing podium projecting into the grounds, remain three quarters of a century later.

In London, enter a grand mansion where 59 captured Nazi generals had generous privileges and nearly open access to the house, with every word they spoke being secretly recorded from hidden microphones inside and out. These are among the many places revealed that were overlooked by history.

"Secret missions, hidden war rooms, code breakers, and top secret orders," O'Connor says. "This book has it all. If you are a history buff, a war veteran, or just a curious student of the most significant time in this nation's modern history, you will find many items to explore here."

How An American Country Music Pioneer Entered African Mythology

In 1933, country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers died of tuberculosis. Just 35 years old and at the peak of his career, his demise left a legacy of a life and career unfinished.

This installment from the animator Drew Christie's Drawn & Recorded series, which tells little-known stories from the annals of modern music history, recounts the improbable story of how, in death, Rodgers would go on to inspire not just luminaries of American music, but also the Kipsigis peoples of the Rift Valley in Kenya - whose folk music found its way back to America decades later.

Wisconsin Is America's Goatland

Wisconsin's self-proclaimed moniker as "America's Dairyland" is taking on fresh meaning in the 21st century thanks to a growing market for milk from an animal that bleats rather than moos.

While the state's traditional dairy cattle industry continues to hemorrhage producers at a record pace, Wisconsin's dairy goat industry is in the midst of a long-term, and accelerating, growth spurt. Indeed, in 2019 Wisconsin can reasonably claim to be America's dairy (goat) land.

Let 'em bleat/LaClare Family Creamery

Data from the United States Department of Agriculture, which counts livestock across the United States every 5 years, shows just how much Wisconsin dominates the nation's dairy goat industry. In 2017, the most recent year the USDA surveyed producers, the size of Wisconsin's dairy goat herd easily topped the nation at more than 83,000-head. California came in a distant second, with some 43,000 dairy goats, while Iowa, Texas and Missouri rounded out the top five.

It's not only the sheer size of Wisconsin's dairy goat herd that stands out: The state also leads the nation in the value of sales from dairy goat operations and is the epicenter of national growth in goat dairy.

While these figures give Wisconsin producers bragging rights among their peers elsewhere, they also reveal just how much, and how quickly, the industry has grown in the state in recent years.

Between 2002, when the state's herd amounted to about 26,000 goats, and 2017, the number of dairy goats in the state skyrocketed some 222%.

This explosive growth - about half of which occurred in the five years between 2012 and 2017 - has even caught some producers off guard.

"It would've really surprised me when we started 10 years ago that now there would be so many goats in the state," said Becky Mills, who milks 110 goats and 280 cattle in Winnebago County with her husband, Marvin, and their son.

Wisconsin's Dairy Goat Dominance

The industry's growth is especially astonishing given its humble beginnings in the 1980s, when tariff threats prompted a scrappy upstart from France to bring European-style goat dairy processing to rural Wisconsin.

Arnaud Solandt moved with his parents from France to the U.S. in 1983. At the time, his father represented French food manufacturers to foreign markets and agreed to a four-year stint abroad. Solandt had just graduated from high school and decided to follow his parents and attend college in the U.S., but tragedy struck two years later when a car wreck killed his father and severely injured his mother. With his mother requiring care and two younger sisters at home, Solandt said he had little choice but to alter his plans.

"I had to get working," he said. "My father had been representing a French goat cheese company at the time, and the owner asked if I could get involved for a few months answering calls at the office and taking orders."

Then, a long-running trade spat between Europe and the U.S. over the use of hormones in American beef came to a head when widespread boycotts of American veal in European countries including France, Italy and Germany prompted U.S. officials to threaten a 100% tariff on French cheese.

"It was only a threat, but [American] buyers wanted to hold off on their purchases," Solandt said. "So I asked my [employers] 'Why not make goat cheese in the U.S.?' They said it wouldn't be easy, but find some goats and find a building and we'll see."

Solandt traveled far and wide in search of a region with enough dairy goats to start a cheese processing operation, he said, from Minnesota to Oregon and beyond. It was at a goat conference in California where he met a dairy goat farmer from Wisconsin who told him about a small dairy-goat cooperative in the south central part of the state that might fit what he was after.

At the time there were only about 5,500 dairy goats in Wisconsin, according to the USDA, with a quarter of them concentrated in Columbia and Dane Counties. Solandt soon came to an agreement with the co-op to purchase milk, and together with his French partners purchased an abandoned cheddar processing plant in Preston, in Adams County.

"The threat of tariffs was lifted at that point," Solandt said. "But there wasn't much risk and the building was very cheap. We found something in Wisconsin that was very good."

On July 4, 1989, the new company, called Montchevre, accepted its first milk delivery. After a couple years struggling to make ends meet, business began taking off in the early 1990s, Solandt said. Eventually, Montchevre bought a much larger processing plant in Belmont, in Lafayette County, and cultivated a milk supply network that steadily grew the dairy goat industry in Wisconsin and eastern Iowa.

By the time Solandt and his business partners sold the company to the Montreal-based dairy processor Saputo in 2017, Montchevre had 320 employees, contracts with about 500 farms and was the top-selling brand of goat cheese in the U.S.

Raising Dairy Goats Can Be Tricky

The Mills in Winnebago County are among the roughly 500 farms that contracted with Montechevre and now sell milk to Saputo. The family entered the dairy goat business in 2009 after years of experience milking cattle and quite a bit of research about what to expect with goats, Becky Mills said.

She noted that while there are important differences between cattle and goats, including what she called their "vastly different" nutritional needs, Mills believes having a history in traditional dairy helped ease the transition to goats. She's witnessed numerous people enthusiastically start milking goats without enough preparation only to realize how difficult it can be to produce high-quality milk and turn a profit.

"I'm thankful I have a background with dairy cattle," she said. "The number of people that just decided that they're going to milk goats because they think there's money in it and they jump in completely blind is astounding."

LaClare Family Creamery

Anna Thompson Hajdik, vice president of the Wisconsin Dairy Goat Association, said there are several common misconceptions about dairy goat farming that can lead to trouble for new producers who haven't done their homework. Chief among them is that goats are fine, or even thrive on, eating substandard forage.

"One of the kind of grand myths out there about the dairy goat world is that goats will eat anything," Thompson Hajdik said in an interview on Wisconsin Public Radio's The Morning Show. "And that is a myth that, you know, so many of us in the industry are really . . . working hard to dispel. They are actually quite finicky."

In fact, Thompson Hajdik said in a follow-up interview with WisContext, achieving high-quality goat milk can require even more nutritional care than in cattle.

"Goats are a little more high-maintenance than cows, and getting a high level of performance means really tailoring the diet in some ways even more than cows," she said.

Feeding goats the right diet to achieve high-quality milk can be tough, Mills said, especially in years like 2019, when cold and wet conditions led to a rise in hay and grain prices. These and other expenses can be too much for many new and smaller producers to handle, as evidenced in the churn of dairy goat operations in Wisconsin.

Between 2002 and 2017, the number of dairy goat farms in the state grew by about 350, but that overall growth, concentrated in southwest and western Wisconsin, masks the industry's volatility. A quarter of Wisconsin counties actually had fewer dairy goat farms in 2017 than in 2002.

The finicky nature of dairy goats can also make scaling up an operation more difficult, Thompson Hajdik said, which is one reason why the average dairy goat herd in the U.S. includes only 15 goats. However, there are signs that Wisconsin's industry is becoming more consolidated.

Wisconsin's Largest Dairy Goat Businesses

The only measure of dairy goat farming that USDA tracks where Wisconsin lags behind other states is in its total number of dairy goat farms. With just a little over 1,000 farms, Wisconsin ranks 14th in the nation, slightly fewer than California and a number of other Midwestern states and well behind Texas, which boasts more than 3,600 farms.

As a result, the average size of Wisconsin's dairy goat herds tops the nation, signaling a more developed, and more consolidated, local industry.

For example, a pair of massive new farms in Calumet County have demonstrated that, with enough capital, scaling up a goat operation in Wisconsin is possible. The farms include Drumlin Dairy, which milks about 8,000 goats and contracts with Saputo, as well as the nearby Chilton Dairy, which has capacity to milk between 6,500 and 9,000 goats and supplies LaClare Family Creamery in Malone, in Fond du Lac County. Chilton Dairy is owned by Milk Source, which also operates several of the state's largest dairy cattle operations.

The two farms, which are located just 7 miles from each other in the town of Brothertown, milk as much as 20% of the state's dairy goats, accounting for a large part of the growth seen in the state's herd in recent years.

Though Drumlin Dairy and Chilton Dairy are enormous, they do not necessarily qualify as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations in Wisconsin. Known as a CAFO, this type of business must house an equivalent of at least 1,000 animal units, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which defines one goat as one-tenth of an animal unit. That means a goat dairy would have to be at least 10,000-head to meet the threshold for air and water quality standards that come with a CAFO permit.

Drumlin Dairy is regulated under a CAFO permit for Holsum that includes nearby dairy cattle operations, according to Raechelle Cline, a spokesperson for the WDNR.

Management at both Drumlin and Chilton dairies declined to comment, as did representatives at Saputo.

However, Drumlin Dairy general manager Kevin Wellejus told Green Bay's Fox 11 in 2016 that Holsum was "approached by processors" to fulfill demand for goat milk in the state.

Meanwhile, Larry Hedrich, who owns and operates LaClare Family Creamery with his family, said that a contract with Chilton Dairy has allowed his processing business to flourish. The Hedrich family has milked dairy goats since the 1970s, and today milks several thousand goats. Unlike most Wisconsin producers, however, they no longer sell their milk but process it into dairy products on-site in what is known as a farmstead creamery operation.

"We had come to the conclusion that if we were to survive in the long-term we had to add value to our milk," Hedrich said. "And that caused us to look at processing milk products."

LaClare Family Creamery

After a trip to Europe in 2009 to study how farmstead operations there work, the Hedrich family jumped into the business, with Larry's daughter, Katie, becoming a cheesemaker. Business steadily grew, Hedrich said, sometimes faster than they could manage.

"We ran short on milk for the first few years until I talked to Milk Source," Hedrich said. "The [contract] with Chilton Dairy is what's allowed our plant here to grow."

More broadly, Hedrich points to Wisconsin's extensive dairy infrastructure as key to growth of the wider industry.

Even with the success of businesses like Montchevre and LaClare in Wisconsin, some are anxious that the industry's growth is beginning to crowd out smaller producers, leading to a dynamic that is somewhat reminiscent of the dairy cattle industry, said Mills and Thompson Hajdik.

There are only a few major goat milk processing plants in the state, including Saputo, that contract with smaller farms, and they can exercise considerable power over producers by dictating milk hauling routes and determining when to accept new supply contracts. As of fall 2019, Saputo was not accepting new contracts, according to Mills, but potential plans for an expansion of its plant in Lancaster, in Grant County, could significantly add capacity and demand for more milk.

Still, Mills remains concerned that potential smaller producers could be left on the sidelines as larger operations fulfill demand among processors.

"Why should the plants go to 10 little guys if there's one big one?" said Mills.

The farmstead route can be an expensive risk itself, made even riskier by new producers who might find the notion of producing artisanal goat cheese more romantic than financially feasible, Thompson Hajdik said.

"For people wanting to get into goats, the biggest thing is you've got to have a plant that's willing to take your milk before you take the leap," she said. "People can have stars in their eyes about goats and making a living milking goats, but the economics of it is just so complex. We're in a better place overall than dairy cattle, but when you have these 7,000-head dairies coming in, you're starting to see similar dynamics. As a small producer, there's just so much that's out of your control, particularly if you're going to just milk goats and sell your milk. That kind of tension is something a lot of people don't realize."

This post was originally published on WisContext as part of a partnership between Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television.

Black Athletes Have A Trump Card They Are Not Using Enough

Few things are as ensconced an American tradition as football - except the exploitation of black labor and police harassment of black folk. Black people make up 13 percent of the population but comprise 31 percent of the people killed by police and 39 percent of people killed while not attacking, according to a Vox analysis of FBI data. Regardless of educational level, blacks are consistently paid less than whites. Black exploitation is American as apple pie.

And black men make up 70 percent of the football players in the NFL.

There's a disconnect between the cultural and economic power that black athletes wield and the way they are treated - and it's time that they ignored critics and leveraged that power to boost black communities.

One of those critics is businessman and rapper Jay-Z, who recently launched a partnership with the NFL to help produce the Super Bowl halftime show and other events.

At the news conference to announce the venture, he said that he has "moved past kneeling," referring to players' protests against police brutality.

Many people have not moved on, particularly former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who ignited the movement and remains without a job after being blackballed by the league.

As long as the systemic and inequitable treatment of black people persists, players should not move past kneeling. When it comes to power and leverage, black athletes hold a trump card. Without black athletes, Friday night lights, homecoming, sports betting and the economies of entire cities wouldn't look the same. It's hard to think of any effort that has successfully sought to change the culture that allows this race-based police brutality and labor exploitation that has done so without significant contributions from black athletes. If our most famous athletes can take a stand, then maybe we all can.

Hill argues that the revenue and prestige that predominantly white colleges receive from big-time athletics is derived from the exploitation of black men. Although black men make up only 2.4 percent of the total undergraduate population of the 65 schools in the "so-called Power Five athletic conferences," Hill writes, they make up "55 percent of the football players in those conferences, and 56 percent of basketball players."

Meanwhile, historically black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs - which, Hill argues, provide better educational environments for black students - are struggling to generate revenue from athletics. She urges black athletes to work collectively to become part of programs at HBCUs, and transform HBCU sports into the ones to watch.

But Hill's argument is sound. On the field, black athletes' labor is exploited while colleges make millions off their success. And when the students graduate, they still have to live in the same world as the rest of us, in which their trophies cannot protect them from being harassed and exploited.

We know that when our athletes take a stand, everyone takes notice. In November 2015, black members of the football team at the University of Missouri showed their support of Jonathan Butler, a graduate student who went on hunger strike to draw attention to the failure of the university system president to address racism on campus. The footballers offered administrators an ultimatum: The president had to go or the team wouldn't play. The very next morning, he resigned.

Kaepernick recognized his own power when he took a knee - and as fellow players followed suit, the NFL had to recognize that power, too. What if black athletes across sports and different levels exercised their power collectively like the Missouri football team? I'm pretty sure that kind of collective effort has a greater likelihood of producing the kind of change in policing that black people want to see than the halftime shows Jay-Z plans to produce.

Jemele Hill's call for black athletes to take their talents to HBCUs isn't a radical one; black athletes have the economic leverage and the moral high ground to disrupt inequality. The only people who advise otherwise are those benefiting from the status quo.

September 11, 2019

The [Wednesday] Papers

For completists, there was no column on Tuesday, because it was Day 2 of Doing Taxes. Today is Day 3.

Of course, so much of Doing Taxes is not the actual taxes part, it's the set-up and infrastructure. Ready to print out the forms you need? Great! Uh-oh, the printer is out of paper.

Now, there's a ton of paper around here because I live in an art studio. All kinds of funky paper. But paper that the IRS will accept, i.e., standard white 8 X 11 without holes or unicorns or embossed revolutionary slogans? That's a different story.

Fortunately, I have my own secret stash. Unfortunately, I have no idea where it is, and even if found, I would need the Navy SEALS to extract it. Looks like I'm off to Walgreens!

*

Back from Walgreens and, whew, is it hot out there. I hate summer! Fall all year 'round is the life for me. Anyway, got the fan pointed right at me and now the printer is full of nice, beautiful paper from a nice, beautiful sheaf, because I just wanted to say sheaf. Print!

Oops, looks like this printer needs a new ink cartridge. Again, call in the Navy SEALS. But wait! I have a printer socked away in that one closet by the kitchen and I bet it still has ink cartridges in it! Now I'm the Navy SEAL, maneuvering this thing out of its place in that closet where, for all I know and by all appearances, it is holding the entire building up. Oh well, worth it.

Extracted! Building still standing. And sure enough, cartridges! I don't remember them being so hard to remove, and now there's ink all over my fingers, but cartridges!

Now that I've got the cartridges out of that printer, I need to put the cartridges in this partridges. But how? Oh, I see. Behind that door with the tape job that keeps it in place so the printer continues to work properly instead of shut down because the door (flap?) is loose. And I am not going to violate the integrity of that tape job, which I sense from the look of it my roommate spent hours applying to get just right. And for all I know these cartridges don't even work in that printer. (Spoiler: they don't.)

Now, who has a printer I can use? The clock is ticking! My taxes are due on the 15th, but I need to send out a particular form to my one (of two) remaining investor before then. And it comes to me: I can send a print job to the local UPS store. Yay, local UPS store! They will even deliver, but even I'm not that lazy, though if they brought lunch with them they might have a deal.

So I send them my print job, go pick up my print job, and now I'm ready to Do My Taxes. But wait. This form looks weird. WTF? What did Trump do to the 1040? Oh christ, the 1040 has been redesigned and part of it is now a different form altogether and I need that form, which means another print job and another trip to the UPS store to pick it up, and boy am I hungry. Idea: UPS should also be United Pizza Store. Pizza and parcels! Delivered.

Okay, now I'm ready. Ready to do some math. This year I swear I'm going to be more careful about how I carry losses forward (I'm an S Corp), because I'm almost out of losses to carry and I think I've carried more losses forward in previous years than necessary. What I don't count on is how that will negatively impact my state taxes. Dammit! C'mon, Pritzker!

There must be an optimal solution, but do I have the patience to work out what it is? I do not. But I will spend part of today reviewing the matter because I'm already incensed that I'm paying more in taxes than Amazon and a bunch of billionaires, and boo hoo, somebody's gotta pay for society, you jackwagons. Maybe it should be those who manipulate and destroy it to their advantage.

First, this article is about the 15 richest Americans. Must be nice to be catered to so! Let me tell you something, you could cut the richest Americans' treasures by 90 percent and they wouldn't notice anything missing, that's how rich they are. Maybe that's a reality TV show! See how long producers can whittle away at their fortune until they notice something missing. "Honey, I swear I had 495 cars but today I only count 494! Maybe I left it at our 12th house, or do we only have 11, because one seems to be missing . . . "

Also, this is certainly one way to frame an article - and I realize it's based on an academic paper that framed the question this way - but another way to frame it would be: "Richest Would Finally Pay Their Fair Share Under Warren's Tax Plan."

The media's insistence on framing everything through the prism of the wealthiest and most powerful in our society has been hugely damaging to our political discourse, to say the least. The media is hugely complicit in life-and-death inequities.

Anyway, maybe next year I'll hire a lobbyist to find a clever way to exempt me from taxes. Or I'll find a way to become a walking TIF district. I'm blight in motion, people!

Opportunity Zones? Didn't we used to call those Enterprise Zones? All I know is, they don't work.

And bam, here it is:

"President Trump has portrayed America's cities as wastelands, ravaged by crime and homelessness, infested by rats," the New York Timesreports.

"But the Trump administration's signature plan to lift them - a multibillion-dollar tax break that is supposed to help low-income areas - has fueled a wave of developments financed by and built for the wealthiest Americans.

"Among the early beneficiaries of the tax incentive are billionaire financiers like Leon Cooperman and business magnates like Sidney Kohl - and Mr. Trump's family members and advisers."

The point of those schemes is never to help the poor. Or, rather, the rich find a way to turn everything to their advantage, including helping the poor, as long as the poor are never actually helped.

It's like getting broken up with over and over by the same person. "I get it, you don't like me anymore! You don't have to keep explaining!"

*

Okay, I'm gonna get some 7-11 coffee (paging Fred Klonsky, who is utterly disbelieving that I consume 7-11 coffee in a neighborhood - Logan Square - so suffused with coffee shops that you can get a coffee contact high just walking down the street, but I like 7-11 coffee, and the coffee "bar" there has all kinds of neat fixins, including little marshmallows) and Finish My Taxes. And then I'll have to go back to the UPS store to make copies for my records, and then go to the post office to mail the originals to the good IRS folks of Cincinnati, because that's where my taxes go for some reason, so there's a lot more left that can go wrong.

And then my brother and his wife arrive in town for the weekend. "Hey, there's a great place for coffee down on the corner . . . it's called '7-11.' Get me a large French Vanilla, and two French Vanilla creamers, which I use to make it more French Vanilla-y. And throw some sprinkles in there. I bet you don't get coffee like this in Minnesota!"

But I'm not talking about French Vanilla coffee that comes out of a machine - though, god, I wish I was! - but French Vanilla coffee made in an actual pot and brewed right there in front of you, in a pot with a label on its handle that says "French Vanilla" on it.

Reminder: Rahm is a banker now. He could've done anything in his post-mayoral life. He doesn't need more money. He decided to make more money. That tells you everything you need to know about his core being. He wants to be something (a man of wealth and influence), not do something (solve problems and help people when it's not just a coincidental byproduct of his politics).

What these people do in their post-political careers matters for what it tells us about them. (Paging Jimmy Carter.) My favorite example is former state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who campaigned for the U.S. Senate on behalf of the middle class, but upon losing went to work in wealth management - managing wealth for the wealthy.

Then there are the Daleys. They love the city so much! But after leaving City Hall, Richard M. Daley went to work investing in Russia and sitting on boards of companies like Coke. So much for rebuilding souls.

And Bill, who just spent months telling us how much he cares about the city and everything he was gonna do for us?

"Bill Daley," the Tribune recently noted, "has joined the Bank of New York Mellon as a top executive and moved to Manhattan.

"Daley told the Tribune he won't sell his Chicago home and plans to return to the city. In the meantime, he has rented a place in New York, where he'll spend 'the vast majority' of his time."

My favorite version of this song, though, is by the Blue Ribbon Glee Club - especially the part that has (I'm pretty sure) kazoos. I'm not certain because I'm usually in the next room listening when they practice at my house every Monday night. But it sounds like kazoos - or them imitating kazoos. Anyway, here's some other fine selections of theirs that I highly recommend.

-

BeachBook

For Years, Willie Wright Has Terrorized Women In Andersonville, Victims Say. What Will It Take To Stop Him?

Trump baselessly alleged mass voter fraud in California while campaigning in a special election necessitated by credible allegations of Republican ballot fraud in North Carolina. https://t.co/hcCqS0yOHR

They're not getting paid the big bucks to tell you the truth. Also, don't let them go off the record. Also, they get rewarded for lying and don't care what you think. Also, stop talking to them so much.

September 10, 2019

The ABC political show This Week on Sunday devoted a chunk of time to attacking Medicare for All, drawing fire for the segment's panel makeup and language.

Of particular gall was the fact that the panel's nominal liberal was former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a fiercely right-wing Democrat whose decades-long career in Washington, as Intercept editor Ryan Grim recently detailed in his book "We've Got People," has been devoted to stifling the party's progressive wing.

Sunday was no different as Emanuel, now an investment banker with the firm Center View Partners, took aim at Medicare for All by framing the broadly popular policy proposal as a danger to Democratic electoral hopes in 2020.

During the discussion, Emanuel attacked progressive calls for Medicare for All. Both men claimed that voters would viscerally reject any attempt to change the nation's healthcare system, both by getting rid of private insurance and offering care to non-citizens.

Recounting how he recently "biked around Lake Michigan, nearly 1,000 miles, through Michigan and Wisconsin," Emanuel said that at diners in the two Midwestern states, one constant theme emerged.

"Nobody at a diner ran at me and said, take my healthcare away," said Emanuel.

Likely accurate.

Rahm says no one at a bunch of Michigan and Wisconsin diners told him to take their health care away which is probably somewhat true since who in a diner would start talking to him at all https://t.co/a7zCvdFgB4

The former mayor was joined during the panel discussion by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a staunch Republican and longtime supporter of President Donald Trump. The duo were joined by Rich Lowry, editor of hard-right magazine National Review, ABC reporter Mary Bruce and Axios reporter Alexi McCammond. So, ideologically well-balanced. 🙄

As Democrats increasingly unite around solutions as big as the problems we face, the media still puts up panels featuring politicians with little relevance like Rahm Emanuel and Chris Christie solely to attack the progressive energy in our party. pic.twitter.com/oJmLQI4N7j

Julie Oliver, a Democrat running for Congress in Texas' 25th district, opined on Twitter that Emanuel's position at the network might have something to do with the temperature of his takes on progressive priorities.

Those willing to make the most specious claims do seem to get booked most frequently.

The fact is that we already pay for everyone's healthcare in America - in the most expensive, inefficient ways, with the worst outcomes.

Founder Of Positive Coaching Alliance Passes Torch

The Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA), the leading non-profit dedicated to transforming youth sports to provide character development in youth athletes, announced Monday that Chris Moore will succeed the organization's founder as CEO.

With leadership experience at some of the country's largest and most influential youth sports organizations, Moore will continue to build on founder Jim Thompson's mission since he established PCA two decades ago: to transform youth sports so sports can transform youth.

Moore will report to the PCA's Board of Directors and will be charged with taking the organization to the next level of growth while leading the national effort to promote positivity in youth sports as a way to increase participation and enjoyment for kids and develop them as people of character.

"I'm proud of all we've achieved in the past 20 years, but we have only scratched the surface of youth sport's potential to develop the kind of high-character people our world will need to face the coming daunting challenges," said Thompson. "I am excited about Chris taking PCA to the next level of impact. He has the experience, skills, passion, character and vision needed to do so and I will do everything I can to help him."

The PCA has conducted thousands of live group workshops nationwide and offers invaluable educational resources with its online Development Zone Resource Center for high school and youth sports leaders, coaches, parents and athletes. The organization has grown to a national presence of 18 local chapters, a staff of 70 and nearly 200 trainers creating a positive, character-building youth sports environment for millions of youth athletes.

"As a PCA partner for more than four years, I have seen first-hand what this organization's focus on the character-building benefits of youth sports can accomplish," said Moore. "I couldn't be more excited about the opportunity to capitalize on the national awareness and training structure that Jim and his amazing team have created and solidify PCA's position as a leading voice on youth sports in America."

A veteran of the industry, Moore has driven considerable growth at both nonprofit and corporate organizations over the past 25 years. Most recently, as CEO of US Youth Soccer, the largest youth sports organization in the country, Moore accelerated revenue growth by creating value for its 55 local state associations and more than 6,000 clubs and leagues across the country. He also increased sponsorship and partnership engagement, rebranded the Association and mobilized an army of nearly one million grassroots volunteers to help transform the lives of 3 million youth soccer participants.

Prior to US Youth Soccer, Moore was president and chief operating officer of GENYOUTH, where he facilitated the organization's growth from a start-up to a high-performing, youth empowerment organization dedicated to creating healthier kids, schools and communities nationwide. While at GENYOUTH, Moore convened leaders in the public and private sectors, media, schools, health professional organizations and the National Football League, to collaborate on a nationwide platform to improve the health of our nation's youth. He also led GENYOUTH's partnership with former First Lady Michelle Obama to promote Fuel Up to Play 60, in conjunction with her signature "Let's Move" program to reduce the incidence of obesity in the U.S.

Moore serves as a champion on the Aspen Institute's "Project Play 2020," a collaborative effort by leading sports, health, media and other organizations to increase national sports participation rates and related metrics among youth. He also advises the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in their effort to change the culture of youth sports by creating a national youth sports strategy. Moore graduated from Lake Forest College and received his MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

"I'm delighted to have Chris stepping forward to provide leadership to our formidable movement of talented and committed Staff, National and Chapter Board Members, Trainers, Leadership Council Members, National Advisory Board Members, Partner Youth Sports Organizations and Volunteers. He is the right person to do this," Thompson added. "A special thanks to Greg Santore of Odgers Berndtson, Search Chair Karen Francis DeGolia and the entire Search Committee for identifying a perfect fit to join and lead a team so committed to our mission of developing Better Athletes, Better People."

Disclosure: The Beachwood's Jim "Coach" Coffman is a member of the PCA.

Global Sexual Lubricant Market On Fire

The global sexual lubricant market is expected to reach revenues of around $1.7 billion by 2024, according to Arizton's recent research report, growing at a CAGR of close to 8% during the period 2018−2024.

Key Highlights Offered In The Report:

* The global sexual lubricant market is expected to witness an absolute growth of 125% - a phenomenon leap of over $200 million revenue between 2014 and 2024.

Further, the increased adoption of sex toys such as vagina massagers and masturbators is boosting the demand for sexual lubricants as complementary products among end-users.

* Water-based lubricants dominate the sexual lubricant market. However, silicone-based and hybrid lubricants are increasingly gaining foothold in the market; both the segments are expected to register high CAGRs of about 7.5% during the period 2018−2024. Further, the demand for oil-based lubricants remains high in APAC and MEA countries.

* The number of active sexual lubricants users in the U.S. surpassed the 50 million mark in 2018 from 47 million in 2011.

* The research report includes detailed market segmentation by distribution, end-user, products, gender, and geography.

* The water-based sexual lubricant segment is expected to have an incremental growth of over $360 million, growing at the CAGR of over 7% during the forecast period.

* North America was the largest market in the global sexual lubricant market, accounting for a market share of 37.96%

Market Segmentation By Product Type

* Water-based

* Silicone-based

* Oil-based

* Hybrid

Sexual Lubricant Market - Dynamics

The global sexual lubricant market is characterized by the presence of international vendors and has been witnessing consolidation in the last few years. The competitive landscape is intensifying. The increased awareness among end-users of the availability of sexual lubricants is playing an important role in driving the market, particularly in developing countries.

Key Drivers And Trends Fueling The Growth Of The Global Market

* Increased Awareness of Sexual Rights among Women

* High Availability of Sexual Lubricants

* High Influence of Internet on End-Users' Purchasing Behavior

* Introduction of Private Labels increasing Market Competition

Sexual Lubricant Market - Geography

The penetration of sexual lubricants in North America is high, and the market revenue has been increasing steadily. The APAC market for sexual wellness products is witnessing high growth in regional markets such as India, China, Japan, and South Korea due to increasing popularity of sexual lubricants among end-users. The market in Europe is characterized by high demand for water-based and silicone-based sexual lubricants.

September 9, 2019

The [Monday] Papers

Working on (hopefully finishing) my taxes today (for various reasons, I do them in the fall, not spring), then I've got (another) dentist appointment. Greatest day ever!

[Embed "Today" here. No, don't. I can't stand that guy, and all in his ice cream truck driver uniform. But it is one of the few Smashing Pumpkins songs I like, and I always thought that note he hits first at 1:27 and many times after that was an emblematic sound of the alternative music of the day, a siren call . . . though not as great as the siren call of the Replacements. Plus, the Pumpkins were phony fake posers.]

ICYMI: Beachwood Sports Radio: Double ZoinksBears not who we thought they were. But who are they? Plus: Chicago Predicts Bears Season, Audio Version; Cubs Suddenly Better Than Bears; Like Theo Before Him, Rick Hahn Is A Stone-Cold Liar, and more!

Big problems on the ferry from Freeport to Florida -- announcement just made that any Bahamian without a visa must now get off. This is not normal. Nornally Bahamians can travel to USA with passport and a printout of their police record. This is a mess. pic.twitter.com/DESUm2qBGE

SportsMonday: Glorious Fall Goes Dark

The Bears will bounce back. The little Bears are done, i.e., the Cubs are no longer a serious contender to win a playoff series, let alone a pennant.

The North Siders might still squeak into the postseason but who could possibly be optimistic about their chances in even a wild card game against a Nationals team that will be able to choose between three aces (Stephen Strasburg, Max Scherzer and Patrick Corbin) who are all better than the Cubs' best?

And the Cubs in a series of any length against the scorching Atlanta Braves or the way-out-in-front Dodgers or even the Cardinals? I don't think so. There are the final seven regular season games against St. Louis for the team to give the end of the season a little bit of a positive spin. But it's not bloody likely.

The primary happenstance that we all knew would do in the Cubs this year if it happened, is happening - their old pitchers are getting too old in a hurry.

Jon Lester and Cole Hamels have been lousy for a while now and it sure doesn't feel like slumps. It feels like their runs as well-above-average starting pitchers are coming to an end. And the team has developed no one to take their places. Oh, and their hitting and their bullpen aren't good enough either.

So let's move on to the gridiron, eh? First of all, let's dispense with the one positive to come out of the Bears' season-opening debacle - it was only one game. The Bears lost their opener at home last year and went on to finish 12-4. That must be taken into account. And yes, the fact that last year's loss was all about Aaron Rodgers' brilliance as opposed to the Bears' offensive ineptitude hurts, but still.

Whoops, wait a minute, there is one other post-game positive: An honest evaluation of Mitch Trubisky has finally commenced.

It couldn't have been clearer in the season opener that Trubisky is still a long way from championship quarterback material. Multiple local sports scribes have finally stopped drinking Bears Kool-Aid long enough to point out that, wow, trading up to get Trubisky instead of just staying put and drafting Pat Mahomes (or Deshaun Watson) in the first round in 2017 sure was stupid.

And when the defense shows it lacks depth at some point this season, hopefully it will be pointed out that Pace's trading up in draft after draft (throwing away five draft picks in the last three years alone to acquire players - Trubisky, Anthony Miller and David Montgomery - who have shown few signs of justifying those trades) is not a sound strategy in general or in the specifics. And at the very least it must always be acknowledged that it is a strategy that no one else in the NFL deploys.

We have been trying to point this out since the day of that draft but let's go ahead and do it again: This awesome Bears defense could be paired up with the reigning MVP! And yes, you didn't know that Mahomes would be MVP in 2018 right after the '17 draft, but there were plenty of reasons to believe he would be much better than Trubisky - in the short term and the long.

But what the scribes say doesn't matter (okay, it matters a little, I mean, what am I doing here if not? Don't answer that). What matters is that Matt Nagy was paying attention and will adjust his way of doing things - particularly his game-planning game plans - accordingly.

The imbalance between the running game and the passing game last Thursday evening was so severe it qualifies as ridiculous (and again, we do not use that term loosely at Beachwood Sports). Nagy called 53 through-the-air plays to 12 on the ground. There were a few run-pass options that might have changed the numbers a bit if Trubisky had made different choices, but not enough to matter.

If the Bears had been chasing a multi-score deficit, a fan might be able to justify that imbalance at least a little bit, but the home team never trailed by more than a touchdown.

Nagy doesn't just need more balance - he needs an attitude adjustment. The most important thing going forward with this offense will be to do everything you can to not allow it to blow games all by itself. We're not saying become a ball-control, run-dominant squad - that won't work either. It is clear the Bears can still use the pass to set up the run more than vice versa and yet still dish out plenty of handoffs.

Next up is the Broncos, who will have far less recovery time this week after playing the late Monday game. Hey Bears, let's go for good ridiculous this time! You can do it!

Reasons To Keep Watching

Bobby Winkles, the baseball coach who won three NCAA championships at Arizona State before managing the Angels and A's in the 1970s, tells the story about his near-miss at making the major leagues as an infielder in the White Sox organization in the 1950s.

Winkles had advanced all the way to Triple-A Indianapolis in 1959 when his manager, the old catcher Walker Cooper, summoned the young Winkles to his office.

"Bobby, there's only one thing keeping you from being a major leaguer," Coop said.

"Your ability," said Cooper, and that was that. Winkles was finished as a player after that season.

Current White Sox manager Rickey Renteria conceivably could have a similar conversation with almost half his roster even though, because of rebuilding, all the athletes are wearing a Sox uniform with 19 games remaining in the season. Renteria is stuck basically with two groups of players: legitimate and wannabe major leaguers.

A reasonable place to begin is the pitching staff. After Dylan Cease's 3⅓-inning start against the Angels on Sunday, he along with Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Ivan Nova have been the starting pitchers in more than 68 percent (98 games) of the team's games this season. Giolito has established himself as one of the top pitchers in the game, while the other three have had their moments of competence.

Despite walking five hitters Sunday and throwing 88 pitches, miraculously Cease only gave up a first-inning run to the Angels as the Sox won 5-1.

How about the other 45 games in which a parade of pitchers - Dylan Covey, Ross Detwiler, Manny Banuelos, Carlos Rodon, Ervin Santana, Odrisamer Despaigne, Hector Santiago, Carson Fulmer and Ryan Burr - have toed the rubber to face the opponents' first batter? It's not a pretty picture.

The aforementioned gang of nine has covered almost 200 innings, the equivalent of one proverbial "innings eater." The only problem is that the combined ERA of these fellows, as starting pitchers, is an alarming 7.01. Any one pitcher giving up that many runs might be accused, as Walker Cooper told Winkles, of a lack of ability. He certainly would be eating his innings at a lower level.

Meanwhile, the quartet which has handled the vast majority of starting roles this season has a 4.60 ERA, which still is a few ticks above the 4.52 posted by all starting pitchers in MLB this season. Subtracting Cease from the mix, Giolito, Lopez and Nova have an ERA of 4.35.

Suffice it to say that the ballclub hasn't had an effective fifth starter - let alone a fourth - all season, a fact that partially explains why they currently stand at 63-80 in this Year Three of the rebuild.

Nevertheless, despite losing 10 of their last 13 contests while going 21-36 since the All-Star break, attractions worth observation remain between now and the end of the season. Two of those are focused on Tim Anderson and Jose Abreu, who currently are leading the American League in batting and RBIs, respectively.

Temporary manager Joe McEwing - Renteria had surgery last Friday to repair a rotator cuff - rested Anderson on Sunday, giving the shortstop two consecutive days off given that the team is idle today before Kansas City visits The Grate for three games starting Tuesday.

Anderson, a .240 hitter last season, stands at .334, six points better than the Yankees' D.J. LeMathieu. Only free agent-to-be Anthony Rendon of the Nationals is hitting higher, at .337.

After missing about a month with a sprained ankle, Anderson returned to the lineup on July 30th and has raked at a .363 pace since. In that time over 165 plate appearances, the budding Sox star has walked a total of four times. Pitchers continue to give the guy something to hit, and he's missing less and less. Coming into this season, Anderson had struck out 26 percent of his plate appearances. He's lowered that to about 21 percent this season.

The last White Sox hitter to lead the league in hitting was Frank Thomas, in 1997 with a .347 mark. Prior to that, Luke Appling led in 1936 (.388) and 1943 (.328). In 119 years, that's it. Go Timmy!

Meanwhile, Abreu has been on a tear. In seven games this month, Jose has driven in 10 runs to increase his total to 112, five more than runner-up Raphael Devers of Boston. The Braves' Freddie Freeman leads both leagues with 115.

On Sunday, Abreu hit his third home run in the last four games. The blast that almost cleared the seats in left field was his 31st of the season. Abreu now has 600 RBIs for his six-year White Sox career. That's easy math. He also is within shouting distance of the 36 home runs, his career high, he hit as rookie.

Dick Allen stands alone with 113 RBIs in 1972 as the only Sox player who has led the American League in runs driven in. Stay tuned.

Giolito also is worth watching. He appeared to be headed for his 15th victory last Friday, exiting after seven innings with a 4-2 lead over the Angels. For just the second time this season with the Sox leading after seven innings, the bullpen wasn't able to hold on as Aaron Bummer and Alex Colome each gave up home runs in the eighth and ninth innings, respectively; the Sox dropped a 5-4 decision.

Giolito will get four more starts to try to improve upon his 14-8 record and 3.27 ERA, facing the Tigers, Royals, Indians and Twins. So far in 2019 in 12 games against these foes, Giolito has gone 8-3 with a 2.34 ERA.

Despite the lofty accomplishments of guys like Anderson, Abreu and Giolito, we're still talking about a team 17 games below .500. As mentioned, you can point a finger at the lack of depth in starting pitching, but there's not enough fingers on both hands to target the other deficiencies of this team.

Ridiculous baserunning was on full display last week. With the Sox trailing the Indians 8-6 in the ninth inning last Wednesday, our fellows loaded the bases with one out. Eloy Jimenez hit a screamer to dead centerfield that was headed for a bases-clearing drive until Oscar Mercado made an unbelievable over-the-head diving grab. Abreu could have crawled home from third. However, he was running with the crack of the bat, so the bases remained jammed as Ryan Goins fanned to end the game.

Abreu was apologetic afterward even though Renteria pointed out that his run was pretty much meaningless since the Sox were down by two. However, the play made the Sox look unprofessional and unprepared, while it also would have been helpful to see how relief pitcher Nick Wittgren would have reacted protecting a just one-run lead with the tying run on second.

On Saturday en route to an 8-7 loss to the Angels, Yoan Moncada's fifth-inning base hit scored Anderson from second as the Sox mounted a comeback. The routine throw from the outfield was cut off by Albert Pujols, who found Moncada foolishly halfway between first and second for an easy out. In a close game every out counts.

There have been many other gaffes on the bases, botched rundowns, and ill-advised throws from the outfield. Ballclubs can have players leading the league in hitting and RBIs, but without the mental acumen to minimize mistakes, along with questionable ability, you have a recipe for lots more losses than victories.

Global Condom Market On Fire

The global condom market is expected to reach over $12 billion by 2024, according to Arizton's recent research report, growing at a CAGR of over 9% during 2018−2024.

Key Highlights Offered in the Report:

* The global condom market is likely to realize an absolute growth of 121% - a phenomenon leap of over $7 billion revenue between 2014 and 2024.

* Buoyed by the demand from institutional buyers (USAID, UNFPA, NGOs, and private agencies), the overall shipment of institutional condoms is expected to reach over 39 billion units by 2024, witnessing an absolute growth of 65% between 2018 and 2024.

* The female condoms market is expected to register a high CAGR of about 21% during the forecast period. The market remains highly concentrated in Africa with the institutional demand accounting for almost 95% of the overall unit consumption in 2018.

* Spurred by innovations such as flavors and designs, the demand for branded condoms in the commercial market is likely to register a CAGR of over 11% globally during the period 2018-2024.

* The increasing visibility of condoms in mass-market retail chains such as Walmart, Tesco, Sainsbury's; drug retailers such as Rite Aid, Walgreens, and Boots; and e-commerce websites such as Amazon and eBay has aided in market growth. Further, growing advertising and promotional activities on social media platforms are likely to boost the demand for condoms further world over.

* The research report includes detailed market segmentation by product, end-user, material, distribution, and geography.

* The female condoms segment is gaining popularity and is expected to contribute about 1.96% in terms of revenue by 2024.

* The global female condom market will post a CAGR of over 21% in terms of revenue during 2018-2024.

Market Segmentation By Product:

* Male Condom

* Female Condom

Market Segmentation By End-User:

* Branded

* Institutional

Market Segmentation By Distribution:

* Retail Stores

* Specialty Stores

* Mass Market Players

* Drug Stores

* Grocery Stores

* Online Stores

Market Segmentation By Material:

* Latex

* Non-latex

* Polyurethane

* Polyisoprene

* Nitrile

* Lambskin

Market Segmentation By Geography:

* North America

* APAC

* MEA

* Europe

* Latin America

Condom Market - Dynamics:

The introduction of female condoms has created a new market segment itself, though the adoption is at the nascent stage. The segment is estimated to grow at a CAGR of over 21% during the period 2018−2024. With organizations actively seeking to commercialize the scale of production and usage of female condoms, the market is expected to offer significant growth opportunities to vendors during the forecast period.

Key Drivers And Trends fueling Market Growth:

* Popularity of Sex Education Programs increasing Awareness

* High Prevalence of Sexually Transmitted Diseases

* Innovative Condom Designs

* Efforts toward Family Planning and Birth Control

Condom Market - Geography:

In 2018, APAC was the largest segment of the global condom market, accounting for the highest market shares in terms of revenue and unit shipment. The penetration of sexual wellness products in North America remains high, and the market revenue has been increasing steadily. The European market is characterized by high demand for premium condoms. However, the stringent government regulations will remain a hindrance to market growth in the region.

Driving to Orland Park when I worked in the Tribune's bureau there used to take 45 minutes to an hour. Is Champaign a lot closer than I think?

-

Water Polo
"Dozens of people jumped into the Chicago River Saturday morning, to show just how clean it is," CBS2 Chicago reports.

Write your own punchline.

-

New on the Beachwood . . .

Beachwood Sports Radio: Double ZoinksBears not who we thought they were. But who are they? Plus: Chicago Predicts Bears Season, Audio Version; Cubs Suddenly Better Than Bears; Like Theo Before Him, Rick Hahn Is A Stone-Cold Liar, and more!

September 6, 2019

The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour #268: Double Zoinks

Bears not who we thought they were. But who are they? Plus: Chicago Predicts Bears Season, Audio Version; Cubs Suddenly Better Than Bears; Like Theo Before Him, Rick Hahn Is A Stone-Cold Liar, and more!

- Nagy said a 51-yd FG was out of the range Chris Tabor had set pregame, but 46 would have been a go w/out the delay of game- Seems like Pineiro still needs to earn trust. Nagy: "I felt like the percentages were better for us to go for it and get it."

This happens every nfl game & not just for Rodgers. Refs watch the play clock hit 0, then they look to see if the ball has been snapped. Theres always a split second to spare after it hits 0. Bears delay of games clearly took longer than that to snap the ball. Stop making excuses

10. Roy Robertson-Harris is such a cool story. Overlooked kid from UTEP is an undrafted free agent. Misses his rookie year. Switches from edge rusher to 3-4 defensive end and steadily rises up the depth chart.

September 5, 2019

37 Million Americans Still Face Hunger, Including More Than 11 Million Children

A new report released Wednesday by the United States Department of Agriculture found that 1 in 9 households (11.1%) in the United States encountered difficulty at some time during 2018 in providing enough food for their family.

This represents a decline of 0.7 percentage points from last year and is the lowest rate since prior to the recession. There was a particularly large decline in food insecurity among households with children, which went from 15.7% in 2017 to 13.9% in 2018 and represents the lowest rate in at least 20 years.

While the declines are certainly good news, 37.2 million Americans still face hunger, including 11.2 million children. Some of the groups experiencing above-average rates of food insecurity include households with children led by single parents, households with children under age 6, and households with low incomes.

Among people who are food insecure, approximately one-third have incomes above 185% of the federal poverty line, and most do not quality for any federal nutrition assistance programs. For these households, charitable food assistance may be the only option.

"While we are encouraged by the decline in food insecurity rates, the fact that more than 37 million Americans struggle to put food on the table is unacceptable," said Kate Leone, chief government relations officer of Feeding America. "Additionally, the Administration has proposed a rule change to SNAP that could jeopardize this progress. By its own estimates, the proposed rule would take SNAP benefits away from more than 3 million individuals and increase food insecurity. We urge the administration and Congress to protect SNAP."

Feeding America is leading efforts against this SNAP proposal and encouraging others to do the same. The public has 19 days remaining to submit comments here to the USDA - deadline September 23 - on how dangerous this proposal is to the health and well-being of many Americans.

The USDA's report, Household Food Security in the United States in 2018, is published by USDA's Economic Research Service and reports on data collected in December 2018. The report also presents statistics on how much households spent on food, and the extent to which food-insecure households participated in federal and community food assistance programs for 2018.

The [Thursday] Papers

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Unbearable
In case you haven't heard, the Bears open the NFL season tonight at Soldierz Field against the Packers. But we may already have in hand the season's worst take:

Hard to argue with Chris Tabor's defense of the way the #Bears went about their exhaustive kicker search: "You say unconventional ... If we would just do the same thing over and over again and expect different results, I think that's the definition of insanity."

Second, none of the nine kickers in their competition made the team! Once they were done with their scientifically, consultant-added kick-off, they went out and traded for Eddy Pineiro instead!

Oh, but that's not all. The Bears had such confidence in Pineiro that they then tried to trade for Baltimore's Kaare Vedvik. The Vikings got him instead - and he was so bad they released him.

So yeah, finding it hard to argue against the Bears' approach takes an awful lot of strenuous work, beat-sweetening and blue-and-orange-colored glasses.

Scott Mitchell Trubisky
"Mitch Trubisky . . . currently resides in the Bortles Valley where you can be a top-3 draft pick and have people still be shocked when you do something capable on the field," Drew Magary writes for Deadspin.

He's not wrong!

"There are times when Mitch looks razor sharp, and then there are times when he looks like he just converted from playing slot receiver."

*

The rest of Magary's piece is gold, including, "Rahm's not mayor anymore! You're FREE. Until he goes on television again eight seconds from now."

The Truth About The New Halas Hall

The Bears "unveiled" their Halas Hall upgrade last week to a wide-eyed and mouths-agape media all too happy to propagate the company line that the building is now a "game-changer." All I could do was wonder, again, why our schools can't get the same treatment. I could only come up with the same old answer: Capitalism is great for creating wealth, but awful for distributing it.

Now, I don't begrudge the players their luxuries. But it would be interesting to do a little analytical study to see if there is any correlation at all between an NFL team's facilities and their won-loss record. Assignment Desk, activate!

The best write-up on the "new" Halas Hall I saw, which also evoked schools, albeit in a very different way, came from the Chicago Architecture blog, which, purposely or not, put the abs in the absurd:

"The new HOK-designed building has more drama than a high school musical, with black carpets, brick walls, recessed linear lighting, and a black hallway lined with the illuminated numbers of retired Bears players arranged like markers on a gridiron."

Nice.

"The lights come on as the players walk down the hall, accompanied by music, and arrive at a 46-foot video wall. There are about 175 video screens in the Halas Hall expansion. Your man cave weeps."

*

"The Bears' newest Halas Hall expansion is an apt illustration of just how far the franchise has come under McCaskey ownership - one of the last NFL teams to join the 20th century in terms of facilities is now leading the way in the 21st," Mark Potash writes for the Sun-Times

But wait: It was under McCaskey ownership that the team lagged behind - for decades! How they get credit now is beyond me. A more accurate appraisal might read: "It only took 100 years, but the McCaskeys have finally acceded to providing their players with the kind of facilities other teams have had for years."

(This is an example - extrapolate to all kinds of news coverage - of how a newspaper I would edit would read as opposed to the newspapers you read now; it would contain more truth.)

"The Bears gave the media a tour of the expansion Thursday morning and it looks like they thought of everything - more lounge areas; more conference rooms; two enclosed patios, a learning center for staff training. The Bears even installed a 4,200-square-foot rooftop garden area, where they will grow their own herbs.

"Safety Eddie Jackson gave it the ultimate compliment: 'I feel like they're giving Alabama a run for their money.'"

So maybe your lead is: "It's not quite Alabama, but the Bears are finally starting to catch up with the rest of the world when it comes to training facilities."

*

The Tribune's coverage was less breathless - I mean, they drained all the fun out of it, as the Trib is wont to do - but for the life of me I don't understand why any reporter (or editor) would feel compelled to include quotes like these in a work of journalism:

"Throughout the process our goal was not only to develop a more collaborative work flow across the building but to create an experience for everyone entering Halas Hall so that it becomes more than just a work space," team President and CEO Ted Phillips said.

Added general manager Ryan Pace: "This upgrade furthers the continued support from the McCaskey family and their commitment to attract, develop and retain the most talented roster possible both on and off the field."

If Phillips and Pace really said those things - like, out loud instead of words written by a PR staffer and attached to their names in a handout - I give them all the credit in the world for perfecting the AI of Human Press Release without having computer chips inserted into their brains.

*

To an earlier point, in 2015 Stackranked every NFL team's weight room. Now, I know weight rooms don't equal the full facility, and I don't know what Stack's methodology was, but it was all I could find on short notice. And guess what? The Bears' weight room ranked 5th - and that was in the second of four consecutive years finishing last in their division. The New England Patriots' weight room - and the weight rooms of a boatload of teams better than the Bears that year - ranked 27th. The Patriots went 12-4 that year, though they did lose to the Broncos in the AFC Championship Game. (And the Broncos did have the 4th-best weight room in the league - one better than the Bears! - so there's that.)

*

Where does it end? Because, mark my words, in two or three years we'll start to hear rumbles about how the Bears need to update Halas Hall. Everyone else is doing it! It doesn't end, because there is no limit to the amenities that can be offered. And who ultimately pays for it? Fans. Because that's how capitalism creates wealth and distributes it.

State Terrorism Task Force Distributes STOP The Bleed Kits To Every Illinois School

Following the recommendations of the School Safety Working Group, more than 7,000 STOP the Bleed kits have been distributed to schools in Illinois ahead of the 2019-2020 school year. STOP the Bleed is a national campaign intended to train, equip and empower bystanders to help in a bleeding emergency before professional help arrives.

"Our top priority will always be preventing violence from occurring, but we must also be prepared for worst case scenarios.," said Acting IEMA Director Alicia Tate-Nadeau. "STOP the Bleed kits and the training that comes along with them can save lives and I applaud the Illinois Terrorism Task Force for implementing this program statewide."

This summer, the Regional Offices of Education distributed one STOP the Bleed kit to each school in Illinois. Each school district is being asked to train a minimum of five teachers/staff in each building where children attend school. Upon completion of this training, the Illinois Terrorism Task Force, via the Regional Offices of Education, will distribute an additional five kits to the school.

"STOP the Bleed kits provide the tools to help the public save lives, but the knowledge and confidence to save a life comes with proper training," said Mary Connelly RN, Director of the Illinois Medical Emergency Response Team (IMERT). "With more certified trainers, the mission of helping and protecting our communities can grow."

The Illinois Terrorism Task Force is calling on those in our medical community, volunteer organizations and police and fire community to join this mission.

In order to meet the demand of the more than 5,000 public and private schools in Illinois, more trainers are needed to provide this invaluable hands-on training.

MERT, in collaboration with the Illinois Department of Public Health Division of Women's Health, has pledged to train one thousand school nurses by February 2020. Yet, even more help is needed.

The 90-minute STOP the Bleed training was developed by the American College of Surgeons specifically for the public and is offered by trained healthcare and public safety volunteers at no associated cost to the school.

To find a training course, or learn more about how your organization can help provide training, visit www.Ready.Illinois.gov.

Tru Time

I hear Matt Nagy will have his starters sit out the second quarter against the Packers Thursday night to optimize health at halftime. Given how good the local sports commentariat thinks these Bears are going to be, three full-strength quarters out of four should be more than enough to blow away Green Bay.

The biggest football game in Chicago since the 2010 NFC championship loss (that actually occurred in January 2011) to that same delightful team from Wisconsin kicks off the 100th season of NFL football on NBC at 7:20 p.m. And no, I don't think anyone will sit out any of it.

I'm also optimistic about the Bears but the problem against the Packers is the team from up north wins the quarterback match-up in a landslide. Aaron Rodgers has been winning NFL football games with his arm for more than a decade now. There isn't a starting quarterback in the NFL who isn't in his first year at the helm who has thrown fewer passes against live competition post-high school than Mitch Trubisky.

That doesn't mean young Mitch won't be a winning signal-caller overall. It does mean that if he struggles at the start of the season we will all have to scratch our heads yet again about why Ryan Pace and Coach Nagy continue to ignore obvious elements of successful quarterback selection and development.

I understand you don't want to get your quarterback hurt in meaningless preseason games. And perhaps even more important, you don't want to get any of your best offensive linemen hurt.

But Trubisky hasn't thrown enough passes against competition, period. He didn't throw enough in his one season as a starter for a mediocre team with a mediocre scheme at North Carolina, and he hasn't thrown enough passes in games in the NFL. Why Nagy doesn't acknowledge this and get him some game work in the preseason (like many other NFL coaches continue to do with quarterbacks with far more experience than Trubisky) continues to mystify.

In college, Pat Mahomes threw more passes in a month's worth of games at Texas Tech than Trubisky threw in his entire career. It was no wonder Mahomes hit the field flying last year and kept it going until just missing a trip to the Super Bowl, while winning the MVP award.

And Mahomes, who was drafted eight picks after Pace made that crushingly bad trade up to get Trubisky No. 2 in the 2017 NFL draft, will always be a primary peer for the Bears' quarterback. The other one is the Houston Texans' Deshaun Watson, who was also about a hundred times more accomplished coming out of college in 2017 (and was drafted right after Mahomes) than Trubisky. And he looks poised to have a huge season this year as well.

Then again, neither Mahomes nor Watson has the Bears' defense working to get them short fields to work on. Barring significant injuries, there is no reason to believe this Bears unit, with nine of 11 starters returning (I consider the nickel package the starting defense at this point, and the Bears brought in new nickel back Buster Skrine to go with new safety Ha Ha Clinton-Dix), won't be one of the best in the NFL. Oh, and did we mention that four of those nine were named All-Pro first team at the end of the 2018 season?

It is time for Trubisky to upgrade from game manager to game winner if he is to even begin to justify being drafted that high. But for a Bears team that again this season features a great defense first and foremost, the most important thing will be for him to not screw up.

Last season may have ended with the double doink, but more importantly it ended with Trubisky completing several beautiful throws to star wide receiver Allen Robinson during the clutch drive that set up that field goal attempt. If Cody Parkey had made that kick, the Bears could have said Trubisky didn't just win a game with his arm, he won a playoff game.

My prediction is the Bears win the division at 11-5 and the quarterback will get another great shot at postseason glory.

The Conversations Summit

Hope For The Day has rallied a coalition of more than 40 organizations - from community non-profit agencies to academic institutions - to dedicate to a day filled with education, inspiration and activation on mental health.

The 2019 Conversations Summit will include interactive workshops and panels of community leaders and representatives, including U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly and Illinois House Majority Leader Greg Harris. The event will conclude with a call to action and musical performance by the musical artist Gnash.

The Summit will also feature workshops and speakers on topics crucial to youth today, all intersecting with mental health. These include school stressors, self-expression, economics, identity and orientation, social and criminal justice, personal agency, and family dynamics.

The event, which is free and runs from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. on Saturday, will be graciously hosted by the University of Illinois-Chicago the Isadore & Sadie Dorin Forum.

"We chose to hold the Conversations Summit during National Suicide Prevention Month because prevention starts with a conversation on our mental health," says HTFD founder Jonny Boucher. " Not only will attendees interactively learn about how mental health influences all of us, but also how each of us plays a critical role in starting the conversation beyond this summit in our personal and professional lives."

The [Wednesday] Papers

While sitting in the chair waiting to be worked on, I sent the following e-mails to our very own Tim Willette:

* "If things don't go well, all my passwords are richrath."

* "It's like a chop shop in here."

* "This is a tooth mill!"

And then when it was all over:

-

Things have changed a lot since the last time I went to the dentist. They don't x-ray you with that big machine left over from the war anymore. Instead, they just use basically x-rays on a stick. "Just bite down on that." Don't I get a radiation gown? "Yeah, we don't do that anymore."

*

There are also TVs in every "bay." (I guess you don't get your own room anymore; it's an open floor plan.) Yay, this TV is set to "Music Choice!" Boo, it's set to the Top Hits channel!

At least I've now heard an Ariana Grande collaboration with someone whose name I've already forgotten. The song, too. Good, I don't want that crap stuck in my head.

*

Still to research: He only cleaned the left half of my teeth. He said he'd like to do them all, but the insurance companies want dentists to do half one day and half another. I asked if they got paid more money that way and all I heard was some mumbling, and possibly the word "radiation." So on Monday it's the right side. For now, half my mouth feels fresh!

"[I]n their high, thin, girlish voices, which, struggling to be heard over Jean Lyons's loud, rough-and-tumble guitar, really do sound like a Barbie army," Franklin Soults wrote for the Reader. "But instead of the so-what boredom that usually sets in after the initial appeal of gutsy, all-too-human amateurism wears off, this group's all-around smarts make that gutsy appeal stick and click."

*

I wasn't able to locate where Lyons is today - and truthfully, I didn't look for her bandmates (not that they aren't worthy!). I had a dentist's appointment.

Biden tells @NPR that he turned against the Iraq War as soon as 'shock and awe' started. But 5 months after the invasion, he said "I would vote that way again today....It was a right vote then, and it'll be a correct vote today." https://t.co/RWvMsZP0Eq

Everything You Need To Play Baseball Is Made In China - And Getting Hit By Trump's Tariffs

Since 1983, Kim Karsh has helped baseball teams deal with an inconvenient fact of the modern economy: Almost everything you need to play America's homegrown sport is now made in China, from cleats to batting helmets.

Lately, supplying the game's amateurs and fans has gotten more difficult. Karsh owns California Pro Sports in Harbor City, California, where invoices for big customers now include a caveat: Prices are up due to the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese imports, and they could rise further on short notice.

"We have to explain to our customers that the trade war affects them as it does us," Karsh said. "We can pass on pretty much everything to the consumer. The problem is, now they will shop lower-quality items. Some understand, and other people don't."

Although duties set to kick in soon will affect all manner of sports equipment that hasn't been made in America for decades, baseball enthusiasts are perhaps affected most because so many items are needed to play the game.

Baseball caps were hit first by the third round of China tariffs that went into effect at 10% last September and rose to 25% in January, on top of the 7.5% base tariff. Those added about a dollar to the cost of a hat, Karsh said. Trump's tariff will rise to 30% in October, bringing the total to 37.5%, and possibly causing another price increase.

Retail prices for metal bats have already risen $5 to $10 each, Karsh said, even though a 10% hike on bats and other sporting goods was put off until Dec. 15 as the Trump administration made a concession to the Christmas shopping season. On Aug. 23, President Donald Trump said he would jack up the levy to 15%.

"If you can buy now that would be a plus," Karsh told customers in August, figuring the only direction the tariffs will go is up.

Since the sporting goods industry has become so dominated by Chinese imports, teams have little ability to shop around. Meanwhile, equipment is not the only mounting cost, with rising fees at municipal fields and less volunteer labor from parents. That raises the barrier to entry for a game that's supposed to be accessible to everyone.

"Baseball is struggling. The expense of playing the game has gone up sky high," said Charles Blackburn, executive director of the National Amateur Baseball Federation, a 105-year-old volunteer group that organizes teams and tournaments. "It's a tax on top of a tax. They're discouraging people from playing the game of baseball."

Global Small Ball

The story of how baseball gear became a product of China is the tale of globalization, writ small.

In the 1800s, when baseball consisted of loosely organized leagues with few uniform standards, balls were made in a factory in Natick, Massachusetts, and sewn together by women who worked out of their homes. The manufacturer, Harwood, developed the iconic figure-eight seam design involving 108 stitches and horsehide tanned on the outskirts of town.

As baseball developed, the major leagues standardized their balls and cut exclusive sourcing deals, first with Spalding and then with St. Louis-based Rawlings. Partly owned by Major League Baseball, Rawlings is now the nation's largest supplier of baseball gear, and also a heavy importer from China.

Even slight alterations in baseball materials and construction can lead to heated debates, fueled most recently by a rise in home runs that some have theorized may have to do with the 5-ounce spheres having less drag.

But the physical ball hasn't changed much since 1977, when Rawlings officially started producing them for both the National and American Leagues. A cork center is coated with rubber, wound with hundreds of yards of wool and cotton yarn, and finished with hand-sewn leather. Since it remains a labor-intensive process - with no machine yet able to navigate those 108 stitches - manufacturers have moved around the world in search of lower wages and higher-volume suppliers of raw materials with less toxic production processes.

"We had the facilities and the know-how," said Bill Sells, senior vice president for government affairs at the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. "And as the market developed, others became proficient at making balls, and it went overseas."

While the major leagues won't be affected much by tariffs on Chinese imports, everyone from Double-A players down through the office softball team will be.

Rawlings made its balls in Puerto Rico until the 1960s, when it moved to Haiti - along with other ball manufacturers, like Wilson - in search of lower labor costs. As workers in Haiti agitated for higher pay and the political situation destabilized, Rawlings moved production to Costa Rica, where balls are still produced for the major leagues and Triple-A teams.

But in 1994, Rawlings started sourcing lower-end balls for mass consumption to China. Now America imports $69.5 million worth of baseballs and softballs from China annually, compared with $18.5 million from the next-largest supplier, Costa Rica.

Not Just Balls

Only one company in the world still produces baseball gloves in America - Texas-based Nokona, which sells mitts for hundreds of dollars each.

Wooden bats are still produced in the U.S., which is rich in lumber. But metal and composite bats are largely made in China, and those are the ones used by club and school leagues with the tightest budgets.

Although U.S.-based sporting goods companies now produce almost none of their own gear, increasing the cost of imports from China could still jeopardize thousands of U.S. white collar jobs in design, product development, and sales and marketing.

Rawlings, which declined to comment, argued against tariffs in a June letter to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. It said that if tariffs were imposed, "entire product lines" could be eliminated, and job losses within its 670-person domestic workforce would be "inevitable."

So far, no major manufacturers have responded to Trump's tariffs by saying they will move their supply chains out of China. Baden Sports, a family-owned sporting goods manufacturer based in Renton, Washington, tried to rush its orders to get inventory through customs before new duties take effect. After that, CEO Michael Schindler says they'll try to distribute increased costs.

"We're working hard with our suppliers to help alleviate the hit," Schindler said. "The Chinese government changes the currency to account for about 2%. Then you pass a couple percent on to your customers, and you might eat a percent or two. Everybody participates in the pain. It's in everybody's best interest to keep the thing going."

But Schindler acknowledged China may not be his company's last stop. As China moves on to higher-tech products like electric cars, Schindler said, the painstaking work of ball manufacturing may migrate to nations earlier on in their industrial evolution, like Bangladesh and Malaysia - just as his company shifted from Taiwan and South Korea in the 1980s to Japan and on to China. For his next move, Schindler is thinking about someplace closer to his customers, like Mexico or the Dominican Republic.

The problem is, other countries don't have the labor force or the port capacity yet to handle a total exodus from China. Also, relationships with suppliers are hard to build: Baden has worked with the same Taiwanese-owned company since 1979, as it moved with him from country to country. It's easier to relocate within Asia than to move halfway across the world - especially when the tariff situation seems to change from week to week.

"If you're not thinking about it, you're nuts," Schindler said. "It's almost impossible to do anything about it quickly. And partially because when the tariffs were first talked about, you never really knew. It's really hard to make hard and fast decisions when you really don't know."

Think About The Kids

Uncertainty also faces most baseball teams and leagues as they plan next season's purchases.

The Fort Wayne TinCaps, a Class A team, has braced for a cost increase. The team bought 8,160 balls last year at $53 a dozen, which comes to $36,040. Rawlings has an exclusive contract to supply the TinCaps with Chinese-made baseballs, so there's no way to bargain down the price. Although the TinCaps share the cost of bats and balls with their major league affiliate, the San Diego Padres, collectively the tariffs could mean a significant cost increase by next year.

And that could also affect the fan experience, from Double-A teams on down, said team president Michael Nutter. One of the traditions of these games is tossing balls out to eager fans, which can get expensive if prices rise.

"I know some teams and operators are really strict with the baseballs and discourage players from throwing them to fans and trying to protect every single baseball," Nutter said, while noting that he'll continue to encourage fielders to be generous. "Really, to us, this is a cost of doing business."

Youth sports have even less wiggle room. Tariffs have been on the minds of school baseball team managers across the country, many of whom operate on fixed budgets from local governments, dues paid by parents and ticket sales.

"Anytime there's an increase in equipment cost, it gets passed on to the gate, or you have another fundraiser," said Shelton Crews, executive director of the Florida Athletic Coaches Association. "I know up here in Tallahassee, parents have to raise so much money or make up the difference in cash."

At a certain point, increased prices will translate into lower sales, especially for the mom-and-pop shops like Karsh's that already operate on razor-thin margins.

"We can survive, but it's very unfortunate what they're doing," Karsh said. "The manufacturers have put all their eggs in one basket. But there's not much I can do about it. Not much anybody can do about it."

September 3, 2019

Chicago's Apocalypsticks Won The 2019 APA Ladies 8-Ball Championship

Five Chicago residents are $10,000 richer after a recent visit to Sin City. But their good fortune didn't happen in the casino. The team of the Apocalypsticks won the 2019 APA Ladies 8-Ball Championship last month in Las Vegas.

The Apocalypsticks were one of only 256 worldwide to qualify for the American Poolplayers Association's (APA) Ladies 8-Ball Championship held at the Westgate Resort & Casino.

The Apocalypsticks took home $10,000 and ultimate bragging rights upon returning home to their local poolroom. Team members include: Courtney Glascoe, Darlene Dantes, Silva McDermott, Crystal Banks and Nicole Riggio.

The teammates are members of the Chicago APA Pool League that includes nearly 1,500 players.

The Ladies 8-Ball Championship, held Aug. 11 - 14, was part of the APA's World Championships ,which featured six divisions, nearly 15,000 total players and more than $1.2 million in prize money.

Here's the video of the Apocalpysticks' championship match against the Femmes Fatales of Brentwood, New York:

*

The APA, based in Lake Saint Louis, Mo., sanctions the world's largest amateur pool league, known as the APA Pool League, throughout the United States, and the Canadian Pool League in Canada. Nearly 250,000 members compete in weekly 8-Ball and 9‑Ball League play.

The APA is generally recognized as the Governing Body of Amateur Pool, having established the official rules, championships, formats and handicap systems for the sport of amateur billiards.

The APA produces four major tournaments each year - the APA World Pool Championships, the APA Poolplayer Championships, the U.S. Amateur Championship and the APA Junior Championships - that, together, pay out nearly $2 million in cash and prizes annually.

The APA and its championships are sponsored by Aramith, Action Cues, PoolDawg and Valley-Dynamo.

The [Tuesday] Papers

Of course, every time I see Benny he lobbies for more cat news in the Beachwood. I'm always like, "Dude, you should be my cat correspondent!" And he's like, "How much does it pay?" And that's where the conversation always ends.

Back In Black To School
"The new school year began Tuesday for about 350,000 Chicago Public Schools students. Children and their parents dodged raindrops as weather made for a soggy start to the morning," the Tribunereports.

Labor Nay
"The sights and sounds of the annual Labor Day parade drew thousands of spectators Monday, marking one of the last hurrahs of summer," the Rockford Register-Starreports.

"Members of Ironworkers Local 498 rode atop a steel girder to recreate 'Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,' a famous 1932 photo of ironworkers having lunch 69 floors above New York City during the final months of construction of the RCA building. The Local 498 girder in Rockford's parade was on the back of a truck and carried nine men and two women who waved to onlookers."

It's pretty awesome! Click through to see.

However . . .

"According to archivists, the photograph was in fact prearranged. Although the photograph shows real ironworkers, it is believed that the moment was staged by Rockefeller Center to promote its new skyscraper. Other photographs taken on the same day show some of the workers throwing a football and pretending to sleep on the girder. The photo appeared in the Sunday photo supplement of the New York Herald Tribune on October 2, 1932."

*

"Some historians believe there was a sturdy level of the structure, then called the RCA building, just below the frame," the Washington Postreports.

I'd like to have met the tiny spider that spun this thread. I wonder what led them out along such a lonely branch! I'm not sure why, but this photo reminds me of that famous photo of the men sitting on a girder 'Lunch atop a Skyscraper'. -- #spider#spidersweb#thread#leaf # pic.twitter.com/LsJmM9M6TG

Labor Day Lead
"Cookouts, parties, and family dinners were pretty common this Labor Day, but they're running differently in University Park," CBS2 Chicago reports.

"[M]any families in the south suburb still can't trust their running water. And they have been going without safe, lead-free running water all summer, but never saw this continuing all the way into Labor Day weekend. And they've had it."

The Illinois Attorney General's Office filed suit against University Park's water supplier, Aqua Illinois, last month.

*

"According to Aqua, things are improving and impacted residents can drink and use their tap water if they run the water for two to three minutes and then use specialized filters.

"As a reminder, you can consume your tap water while under the advisory if you take the proper protective steps, which include running cold tap water for two to three minutes and then filtering cold tap water through faucet filters or pitcher filters certified by the NSF to remove lead," Aqua said in a community update issued this past Friday. "If you haven't already, we recommend impacted customers watch our video tutorial outlining these steps."

"But University Park families said they would not be taking that chance."

"Franklin also attained national print and broadcast media coverage for the company, changed the name and rebranded the company and its subsidiaries, and expanded its investor relations outreach to increase analyst coverage of the company."

Good job, Franklin.

*

"[W]e have built unprecedented momentum in our municipal acquisition strategy, which is largely the result of the passage of fair market value legislation in a number of our states," Franklin said in an earnings call last February.

"Aqua America Inc. (NYSE: WTR) today stated that amended legislation signed into law by Governor Bruce Rauner will continue to allow companies like Aqua to pay a fair market value for water and wastewater systems, benefitting local governments, customers, and the environment."

Then-state Sen. Kwame Raoul was one of the sponsors of that bill - not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. I really don't know. I have no clue. Just flagging it. Perhaps someone can fill me in. But maybe play nice with your customers and show some gratitude. Many folks run their tap water through filters as a matter of course, but no one wants to be warned by the water company that they ought to do it just to be safe. That does not inspire confidence - which means, Mr. Franklin, you've failed at your job. You are in charge of people's water! Act like it.

*

Meanwhile . . .

"All public schools in East Chicago, Indiana were ordered closed Monday due to a water boil order."

Wasn't Monday a holiday? Or was Monday the day the schools were ordered closed? To wit:

"All schools will be closed Tuesday due to a citywide boil advisory, the School City of East Chicago said in a news release Monday night," the Northwest Indiana Timesreports.

Whatever the case, that strikes me as not good.

-

New on the Beachwood . . .

An Exuberant Latin American History Of Pop Art
This looks really cool - at the Block Museum up at Northwestern this month through December.

The exhibition examines how Pop Art's bold and colorful imagery, references to mass culture and representations of everyday objects, signs and symbols, were embraced by artists working across the hemisphere. Pop América also takes a timely and critical look at the social and political impulses behind Pop Art from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s.

Beachwood Sports Radio: Bipolar Cubs Now In Manic PhaseHungry Nick and the dinosaurs. Plus: Steve Albini, Master Of Sparks; How Yu Darvish, Jose Quintana and Lucas Giolito Turned It Around; Chili Stew; This Would Be The Perfect Ending To The Bears' Kicking Circus And Give The City A New Hero To Replace Alligator Robb; and more!

It's really an interesting phenomenon - how many people don't believe in the truth when it gets in the way of their earnings, or acquiring/maintaining power. They just don't believe we should live in a world where facts matter. Our whole culture is built on deceit. Deceiving each other for money, influence, sadist satisfaction. That's why I hate it so much when journalists - and others in "truth professions," such as those in the criminal justice system - betray their core values (and so blithely). Of course, every profession should be a truth profession. Would we really fail to function economically if everybody just decided to be honest? Perhaps we'd prosper more! Instead of working hard to create fake trust with consumers, for example, you could actually earn real trust! Wouldn't profits skyrocket? A race to the truth top! Anyway, this Ring dude is a failure as a human.

Yeah, our story has zero corrections, Ring hasn't pointed to anything factually inaccurate in it, and all of the points Ring makes in this post were included in our original story. Here's the link: https://t.co/db4w8nDzeyhttps://t.co/F16GPIYdxK

The Block Museum is the final and largest metropolitan area venue for the touring exhibition, which was organized by Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art.

Winner of the inaugural Sotheby's Prize, which was established to honor exhibitions that explore overlooked or underrepresented areas of art history, Pop América is the first exhibition to unify Latin American and Latinx expressions of Pop.

The exhibition examines how Pop Art's bold and colorful imagery, references to mass culture and representations of everyday objects, signs and symbols, were embraced by artists working across the hemisphere. Pop América also takes a timely and critical look at the social and political impulses behind Pop Art from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s.

"It feels timely to consider the ways in which ideas, politics and culture have long cross-pollinated across the Americas resulting in innovative and beautiful works of art," said Block Museum director Lisa Corrin. "Pop América expands the canon of art history and our understanding of Pop, shifting the focus away from what was happening in London and New York, to include other expressions of Pop sensibilities."

Exhibition Artists: New Revelations And Familiar Faces

Pop América features nearly 100 artworks by more than 40 artists working in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the United States, sparking a reconsideration of Pop as a U.S. and European phenomenon. The exhibition reshapes debates over Pop's perceived political neutrality and aesthetic innovations, creating vital dialogues that cross national borders.

The artists in the exhibition include Antonio Dias, Rubens Gerchman, Roy Lichtenstein, Marisol, Cildo Meireles, Marta Minujín, Hugo Rivera-Scott and Andy Warhol, among others. United by their use of Pop's visual strategies, these artists have made bold contributions to conceptualism, performance and new-media art, as well as social protest, justice movements and debates about freedom.

"This exhibition will expand both the idea of what Pop Art was, and for many visitors will bring to light what was happening in Latin America in the mid-1960s-1970s," said Corinne Granof, academic curator at The Block Museum.

"A lot of the artists included in the exhibit will be familiar, especially Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein and Latin America artists, such as Marisol," said Granof. "However, the exhibit also includes work by Brazilian artists Rubens Gerchman, Amaral and Cildo Meireles, Columbian artist Beatriz González, Raul Martinez from Cuba and Marta Minujín from Argentina. Many of these artists are not as widely known, and it will be a revelation to encounter their impactful works that play off Pop in compelling and powerful ways."

Global Pop, Global Modernisms

Pop América reinforces trends within art history to think globally and across borders to find commonalities among artists in different regions. The exhibition is one of several in recent years that have reexamined Pop Art and put it into a global context, including International Pop (Walker Art Center, 2015) and The World Goes Pop (Tate, 2015-16).

Pop América also compels visitors to rethink concepts of "America," a question that is especially relevant today. The addition of the accent over the é in América contests the presumed primacy of the United States in artistic, economic and political realms, and reinforces a greater sense of transnational unity. At the same time, the exhibition has the potential to open up conversations about nationality, borders and migration.

The Block Museum of Art has announced that the entirety of its 2019-2020 exhibition schedule will be devoted to the idea of "Global Modernisms," and this exhibition is the first within that framework. Pop América is one of several exhibitions that explore new ways of looking at modernist approaches that were thriving beyond Europe and the United States.

Upcoming exhibitions include aesthetic innovation throughout the Arab World and the Middle East, Turkey, India and - with Pop América - Latin America. The Block Museum is committed to looking at art across time, culture and place, and the 2019-20 schedule promotes new vantage points from which to consider artists' response to modernity.

The Politics Of Pop

The exhibition title is drawn from a 1968 print by Chilean artist Rivera-Scott with its verbal cue to "pop" - or to explode - the idea of America. While the print itself uses familiar visual strategies from iconic Pop artworks, such as Lichtenstein's "Explosion" (1967) - including an animated comic book-like stylized text, flat colors and Ben-Day dots - the emphasis on action that Rivera-Scott conveys through the expression "Pop América" is highlighted throughout the exhibition.

The works are divided into sections that allow visitors to think in active terms, including "Facing América," "Mediating América," "Consuming América," "Liberating América" and "Fashioning América." In many cases, Latin-American and Caribbean Pop art movements engage with material culture in ways familiar from the U.S. context, but reveal different political weight in the context of oppressive military regimes, state censorship, economic challenges and leftist resistance movements. The exhibition sheds light on these stylistic parallels, as well as the specific political circumstances of the individual countries it represents.

The exhibition is groundbreaking in its exploration of the way in which Pop Art was used throughout the Americas as an intentional strategy for communicating sensitive, politically challenging content.

"In North America, Pop Art often emphasized the superficial, surface and appearance, an idea reinforced by such iconography as celebrities and fashion, consumer products, Coke bottles and Campbell's soup cans, comic books - any motif that comes from the world of popular culture," Granof said. "This playful spirit of Pop Art is also apparent in iterations of Pop from the Global South. However, using similar frames of reference, there is sometimes a more political inflection or outright critique that comes through in the Latin American expressions of Pop. At the same time, looking at this work through a different lens, we start to see the stronger political tendencies in U.S. Pop Art."

Public Tours And Programming

Free tours of the exhibition will be held Sundays at 3 p.m. and on select Tuesdays at noon. Spanish-language tours will be held Saturdays at 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 19 and Nov. 9. More information on Pop América tours is available on The Block Museum website.

A full season of free cinema and programming will delve deeper into the topics of the exhibition and several programs, including the Sept. 28 Opening Celebration, will be presented in partnership with Chicago's National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA), one of the most prominent first-voice institutions for Mexican art and culture in the United States. The Pop América collaboration is the first in an ongoing partnership between NMMA and Block Museum aimed at expanding NMMA's reach to Chicago's Northshore, and sharing the wealth of NMMA's cultural knowledge with Northwestern University's audiences.

Pop América, 1965-1975 is co-organized by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, and the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas. The exhibition is curated by Esther Gabara, E. Blake Byrne associate professor of romance studies and associate professor of art, art history and visual studies at Duke University. At the Block Museum, the exhibition is curated by Corinne Granof, curator of academic programs.

Support for Pop América, 1965-1975 is provided by the Sotheby's Prize and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support is provided by the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) and its President and Founder Ariel Aisiks. The project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Alumnae of Northwestern University.

Pop América, 1965-1975 also is a bilingual (English/Spanish) 216-page catalogue published by Duke University Press that explores Pop art as a hemispheric art movement. Reconstituting a network of artists who were active some 50 years ago, Pop América explores how Latin American and Latino/a/x artists adapted familiar languages of mass media, fashion and advertising to create provocative artwork in a range of mediums.

The Block Museum is a member of the Northwestern Arts Circle, which brings together film, humanities, literary arts, music, theater, dance and visual arts.

Sinclair Rampage Continues: Acquires 20% Interest In YES Network

As part of a consortium led by Yankee Global Enterprises, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. ("Sinclair") (NASDAQ: SBGI) announced that an indirect subsidiary of Diamond Sports Group has acquired a 20% equity interest in the Yankee Entertainment and Sports Network ("YES Network"), valued at approximately $346 million on a total enterprise value of $3.47 billion. In addition, under the YES Network management team, Sinclair will direct the YES Network's traditional and virtual distribution relationships.

The YES Network is the country's most-watched regional sports network (RSN), broadcasting games, programs and specialty content for the New York Yankees, the Brooklyn Nets, Major League Soccer's New York City FC, and the WNBA's New York Liberty.

"We are excited about partnering with such a renowned franchise as the New York Yankees," said Chris Ripley, president & CEO of Sinclair. "With this investment, we will have 23 RSN brands, including Marquee with the iconic Chicago Cubs, and 21 RSN brands acquired from the Walt Disney Company last week."

Since its launch in 2002, the YES Network has earned 118 Emmy Awards, and has consistently been ranked as one of the most valuable sports business brands in the world. In addition to televising 128 regular season Yankees games per season, the YES Network also airs pre-and postgame shows; Yankeeography, the Emmy award-winning biography series on past and present Yankees greats; and Yankees magazine, the weekly magazine show consisting of Yankees highlights, player profiles, behind-the-scenes features and interviews.

The investment was funded as part of Sinclair's initial cash equity capitalization into Diamond Sports Group.

September 2, 2019

Patience And Payment

His fastball frequently is clocked in triple digits. The curveball and changeup are rated 55/60 and 45/50, respectively, by FanGraphs. He was the freakin' Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2018.

Yet, Dylan Cease is finding out just how difficult it is to get hitters out in the major leagues. Part of the problem with guys like Cease and other hot prospects, not only with the Sox but throughout the baseball universe, is that the expectations and ballyhoo are so intense and lofty that anything less becomes a disappointment suffered by a portion of the faithful that you'd think their dog just died.

Last Thursday, when Cease gave up back-to-back homers to the Twins' Jake Cave and C.J. Cron, not even the most fearsome hitters in the Twins' scary lineup, to start the top of the third inning, the Sox trailed 7-0 and he was finished for the day. He had faced 16 batters, 11 of whom reached base. This obviously was not the Dylan Cease advertised as a crucial piece of this rebuilding scheme.

Cease's record sunk to 3-7 while his ERA swelled to 6.92. He's been tagged for 13 home runs in just 52 innings in this homer-happy era. The Sox's other Dylan, Covey, got a one-way ticket to Charlotte for similar performances earlier this season.

There must be an explanation for Cease's lack of success thus far. Last week manager Rick Renteria and pitching coach Don Cooper thought possibly Cease was tipping his pitches. Maybe. However, there's no guarantee that hitters can drive the ball more than 400 feet even if they know what's coming. The crux of the matter is that the 23-year-old right-hander, who was drafted by the Cubs as a high schooler five years ago, is still learning how to pitch.

Finesse is required. It's not what you throw but when and where you throw it. We also should note that Cease wasn't lights out at Charlotte before he was summoned to the South Side for his debut in early July. In 15 starts at Triple-A this season, Dylan gave up more hits than innings pitched while walking more than four batters per nine innings. Compare that to the season before when Cease yielded only 82 hits in 124 innings while fanning 160. His ERA was a sparkling 2.40.

But now that Cease is playing against the big boys, none of his minor league numbers really matter. Assuming that he's healthy - assistant trainer James Kruk visited the mound on Thursday after Cease threw a pitch far above Nelson Cruz's head that banged off the screen; Cease assured everyone he was feeling fit - Cease will continue to be a student of his craft at the highest level. A contending team wouldn't be able to afford a student such as Cease. For a club going nowhere this season, the Sox are willing to accommodate his trials and tribulations.

But take heart, people. The list below will show you it's not how you start but how you finish. Present and past pitchers who wobbled and swayed in their initial seasons are easier to locate than a Dylan Cease breaking ball. Included is teammate Lucas Giolito, who briefly appeared for the Nationals in 2016 before throwing his first pitch for the White Sox a year later. The list includes the first three seasons for Sandy Koufax and Zack Greinke, and the initial two years for the other pitchers.

The major takeaway is that all of these moundsmen walked too many hitters as young pitchers but later developed command as they learned and improved. Of course, there always is the possibility that Cease doesn't possess the fiber of a big league pitcher, but that verdict is a long way off. For now, patience is required.

Furthermore, he is not alone. Reynaldo Lopez failed to complete the first inning Saturday evening against Atlanta, facing nine hitters, retiring only two, while giving up six runs and as many hits.

The White Sox have had a number of sorry weeks this season, but the past seven days might qualify as the nadir. Being swept both by the Twins and Braves, Renteria's charges were outscored 47-23. The combined ERA of all pitchers not named Lucas Giolito was a horrifying 9.00 as the team dropped all six decisions.

Old age creates challenges to short-term memory. For this oldster, I'm having a difficult time recalling the team's last win.

Leaving the most recent fiasco for a moment, the one player who has established himself as a legitimate major leaguer on the Sox roster is a guy who is unsigned for the future. Of course, that's first baseman Jose Abreu, who recently recorded the 1,000th hit of his career, all of which has been spent on the South Side.

Abreu has sworn allegiance to the Sox, and The Chairman has averred that the 32-year-old Cuban will play his entire career in a Sox uniform. While some of the team's personnel moves can be questioned, the signing of Abreu to a six-year, $68 million contract prior to the 2014 season has to be one of the most intelligent decisions in team history.

Looking at an array of big thumpers in the game today, Abreu stacks up with the best. The list below shows that Abreu leads all others in hits while ranking fourth in RBIs. He drove in his 103rd run of the season on Sunday. With nine more, he will have averaged 100 RBIs a season for his career. In addition, he is one of the lowest paid players among the big run-producers.

Don't misunderstand. This is not an appeal for a GoFundMe campaign for Abreu. I only bring this up for comparison. However, I also wonder why Abreu's name is not more prominently mentioned as one of the more attractive free agents for the 2020 season. Is it because other clubs won't mess with Jerry Reinsdorf? Is age a factor?

Abreu was hit twice on Saturday by Dallas Keuchel on his left bicep. The swelling and multi-colors of his ample upper arm were apparent on television. Not only did Abreu stay in the game, but he played again on Sunday. He missed time last year with an infection unrelated to baseball. Abreu may not be indestructible, but he's clearly beyond durable.

There are four players in the chart above who are older than Abreu, including Nelson Cruz, 39, who has had a dandy time against the White Sox this season, hitting .471 with eight homers and 23 RBIs. David Ortiz played until the age of 40. Over his last seven seasons, starting when he was 33, Big Papi averaged 32 home runs and 100 RBIs. Might not Abreu's body provide him a chance to play as long as people like Cruz and Ortiz?

Why wouldn't there be competition for signing Abreu? Therefore, Rick Hahn will need to open the vault as wide as possible to make sure that Abreu remains in the fold. Anything less not only will significantly weaken the team, but it also will supremely tax the patience of fans who remain loyal to the strategy of building a contending ballclub for the future.

September 1, 2019

TrackNotes: This Is Why We Can't Have Arlington Park Anymore

We have an addled orange sadist doing the bidding of all the satans he knows and those he dreams to meet.

We have a fabulously wealthy - naturally - whiny little tart invention with a suitably two-way first name regurgitating what passes for culture bitching out her bubble-world indignities toward a society she no longer lives in.

And we have a corporation that should have its name stripped from the venomous mast of its soulless existence.

TrackNotes is taking it back! We're taking back the old saying that we can't, Johnny, have anything nice anymore. It's no longer a pop hook, it's ours now. I'm tired of having things taken away by people whose inevitable fate will be to poison the earth they are buried in or scattered upon.

Churchill Downs Inc., long parlayed with the word 'evil' inside this html, announced last week that it would not enter an application for casino gaming operations at its Arlington International Racecourse, sparking serious momentum for the track's demise.

Yes, your gut feeling is always right. William Carstanjen would be the first to say, "It's not me, it's the company and our responsibility to shareholders." That's because he's a goddamned, emphasis damned, lawyer, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Who has absolutely no appreciation, or even awe, certainly no love, for horses. He's afraid of them. And he's in charge of Churchill Effing Downs! How much hypocrisy and fraudulence can one person contain within himself?

Typically for things that have been ruined, the Kentucky Derby is no longer a race. It's an idea, turned into a nebulous you-don't-even-know-what-it-is carnival CDI has monetized into an "event" not even resembling a serious test of horse and rider. CDI has spent millions developing it's All-American caste system designed to tell you you deserve to spend more money, because you're special, but only in the pricing-tier boxes we designate. The Twin Spires long ago dwarfed underneath the East-West Tollway style of monoliths of Oak Brook and Naperville. Pride of the Twin Spires? Hell, no.

It doesn't start or end here. Factually sharp, the sadness and incredulity can't help but seep out in Ray Paulick's videocast. God almighty.

Since shadow-boxing Dick Duchossois (more on this mirage of a person later) "merged" the track with Churchill Downs Inc. in 2000, after owning it himself since 1983, the legitimately world-class dirt-and-turf facility has suffered from various factors, not ready for the new millennium, in degenerating into low-quality racing and 364 1/2 days' per year obscurity. And overblown illegitimate hype that last half day.

The twists and turns of these events were difficult to precisely predict, except for the scorched-earth nature of CDI's machinations, but this news is not the least bit surprising. It all boils down to the the degree of disgust, driven by greed. CDI's stock price has been a darling for years. The shock of it all and this documentation, however, gives me a physically sick feeling I can't describe.

Remember this as you might the first horseshoe ever to touch its ground in 1927: "We're a gaming company, not a horse racing company," a CDI executive who can still sleep at night said several years ago. That's been my guiding light since he said it.

After bitching and moaning as poor, poor pitiful corporations always do, about not being able to compete because it couldn't get slots to support the purses of racing it so dearly loves, CDI finally got gambling in Illinois, through the desperation of incompetent politicians. Carnivorously, it had already made its play by muscling in to majority ownership of Rivers Casino in Des Plaines and going to bed with Neil Bluhm, a self-described asshole.

CDI has depicted the requirement of allocating 17-20 percent of track casino-based revenue directly to horse racing - translate, purses - as a tax. Dick Duchossois, now with racing blood on his hands, who would be the first to say he loves racing, goes along.

The bumpkins in Pixley, I mean Arlington Heights, see it as mostly cosmetic. And CDI, typically, doesn't pay so much as a bale of hay of responsibility.

So investing in a new casino at Arlington Park so close to Des Plaines makes not much sense.CDI also lusts after the Waukegan casino license, a town ripe as schmucks for the exploitation it seeks.

That press release writers would imply that CDI would "relocate" the track elsewhere would elicit from me one second of introspection before I would punch somebody in the mouth. Do they honestly believe we would believe they would undertake a capital project of such scale?

I cut no slack, and hold no hope. But CDI bullied its way into this and will probably seek to get a better deal from the state legislature out of a half victory of gambling legislation that was rushed, poorly written and certainly a failure in execution.

Common sense never wins. But the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, in condemning CDI's actions, makes an eminently proper demand.

Hit CDI, including "Arlington's considerable property tax break ($2.47 million this year), the track's recapture subsidy ($4.47 million in 2019 alone, straight from horsemen's purses), and the chance to apply for a sports betting license linked to Arlington (a form of gaming that will do nothing to benefit purses)." Wanna play hardball? CDI has all the guts, public officials, no.

CDI answers to no effingbody about Arlington, doesn't divulge revenues or profits, and blackmailed Springfield to get where it stands today.

Dick Duchossois. Dick Duchossois.

He made his money elsewhere. His reputation is as a paragon of passion for the sport of Thoroughbred horse racing. He's 97 years old. He's patted on the head in an Illinois racing game that was, once, long ago, great. Grand Pa Pa.

I do have to wonder if he wants to be remembered for one of the last things he does. Which is turn his back on racing, with the same petulance he has showed time and again.

He's been living off of, as Chicago is prone to do, the 1985 fire that destroyed the buildings. Am I being cynical by thinking corporate sponsorships and a million underwritten smackers compelled him to raise tents and run the Arlington Million, just weeks later? Guess who bailed him out? The Carey family at Hawthorne.

Jim O'Donnell reports: "'Churchill Downs Incorporated will not close Arlington Park,' the 97-year-old industrialist said. 'The Illinois state legislature will close Arlington Park. Only its members can change things.'"

No, Dickie, you got what you wanted and it's not enough. It never is.

Sounding every bit the political welfare king he had to be to have amassed such riches.

Passion for racing? This is a guy who closed Arlington Park for two years in 1998 and 1999 because he got snitty about the boo-hoo price he had to pay to contribute to society, vis a vis his loudly self-declared persecution by the Illinois legislature.

They say, if not for Double D . . . Then why didn't he see to it that the final turn was maintained as horses died in 2007? Why didn't he at least cajole CDI into giving Arlington Park the respect it once held in making it the premier summer meet of the Midwest? Why didn't he tell CDI that they were cannibalizing themselves - and THE GAME - by running Churchill Downs and Arlington at the same time?

At least we know where Duchossois stands:

"But he also lauded the decision-making of both Carstanjen and Bill Mudd, the president and COO of CDI." The Herald.

"The two Bills have yet to make a wrong decision," Duchossois said. "They serve the best interests of the corporation and its shareholders and they have done a fantastic job in that sense."

What about the game? What about Thoroughbred horse racing? That has lionized you despite your in-the-end attitude?

Duchossios, aided by a reputation machine, says what he is but doesn't, really, live what he says he is. Nine times out of ten, bubbles get burst, all too inevitably.

Who are you, TrackNotes? You haven't been out there for 10 years.

They started marketing the facility instead of the game. "You too can pretend to be a wiseguy!" Following, they raised prices. The racing is low-level, unbefitting. Make a day of it? The food sucks. They enjoy taking money from "guests" with a sincere middle finger right back.

The grating music too loud. A horse who opened at 15-1, rightly, gets pounded down to 3-2. How do I do that? The train schedule, the same train Seabiscuit rode, never meshed with the last post or the ticket cashing. I seriously thought about going up there this season, but I said to myself "TrackNotes, you'll only get aggravated because you know who you are."